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What are incoming and outgoing connections?
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The Internet is not much more than a whole bunch of computers connected to each other. With Zultrax P2P you make a virtual connection with another user connected to the Internet so that your program can exchange information with the program on the other end. The information exchanged are searches, the answers on searches and uploads and downloads.
Zultrax P2P knows the address of other users using Zultrax P2P and requests for a connection. If other side is on-line and has the program running, the connection will be established and you can exchange data. In this example the connection is initiated from your side, that we call an outgoing connection. If the connection is initiated from the other side, we call it an incomong connection.
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I only have outgoing connections, never an incoming connection. Is that a problem? How to fix it?
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Zultrax P2P works best when both incoming and outgoing connections are possible. This is the case for not only Zultrax P2P but for all simular software. There are several reasons for this:
- Downloads : When you download a file you take it over this connections from other users. Since each connection is incoming for the one user and outgoing for the other at least one of the two users involved should have the possibility to receive incoming connections. Otherwise the download is just not possible.
- Uploads : The same as told for downloads is true for uploads. If you cannot receive incoming connections you make it others more difficult or impossible to download something from you.
- General performance : Someone should initiate the connections. If you cannot receive incoming connections, all connections you'll ever have are initiated by yourself. So, the program has a lot more connections to initiate. This costs time, so the program functions slower than it could be.
- Reach : If you cannot receive incoming connections you'll never have direct communications with others that also cannot receive incoming connections, since always one of both has the incoming and the other the outgoing connectins. So, without the possibility to receive incoming connections you are on a much smaller network.
So, although the program will function without the possibility to receive incoming connections it is worth to make sure you can receive incoming connections.
How to tell it is wrong?
When the program is running you see the number of connections displayed on the statusbar, split in a number for incoming and a number for outgoing connections. If the number for incoming is always zero you cannot receive incoming connections. In that case you see a yellow light next to this numbers, in case all is OK, the light is green. You don't have to wory about incoming connections when the light is green: All is ok.
How to allow incoming connections?
In all most comon ases when incoming connections are not possible that is because they are blocked by a firewall. Your router has a built-in firewall, windows has a built in firewall and often you might have one more from a security suite as McAfee, Norton or Kaparsky. So, at maximum you have 3 firewalls running, each of which should be configured to allow the connection.
Configuring a firewall to allow a connection means that you state in the firewall that it is OK that this program can accept connections over a certain port. Your computer has some 65.000 ports and over each port one program can connect to the Internet. Zultrax P2P by default connects over port number 6346.
So, you must know which firewalls you have and how to configure them to allow Zultrax P2P to accept connections over port 6346. The manual of your firewall can help you with this. We also have put
manuals for the most common firewalls
online.
A last obstacle: The same port cannot be used by two programs at the same time. The port 6346 that Zultrax P2P uses is a typical port for P2P file sharing software, if you have another P2P program running you might want to close it down when you are busy with configuring the firewalls.
If you want to have both programs running at the same time than one should use another port. In almost each program you can
define another port number.
Still nothing?
All is configured well but you still don't get incoming connections? With Windows, first try the obvious and reboot your computer. It often helps. If not, we noticed in most cases it is still something done not good with the firewalls but there can be other causes:
- It is blocked. Your network administrator or Internet provider has either blocked port 6346 or your ability to receive incoming connections. This is quite common on company networks as the system administrator often doesn't want you to be busy with file sharing, on-line games and that kind of stuff.
- Radio interfearence. You use a wireless router and normally that goes well. But normally is also when you do not much more than reading your E-mails and visit a few websites. It are often things like mobile phones, wireless headsets or other electronics that interfear with the communication between your router and your computer. You can check this out by turning off all that equipment, reboot the computer and see if it helps. If so, you can see in your router manual how to choose another channel. This will fix the problem permanently.
- Another user on your local (or company) network already has claimed port 6346. You should use another port.
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I see much less connections than I would expect. Is that OK?
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Use
settings in the menu tools
to set the maximum number of connections Zultrax P2P will try to have open simultaneously. You'll see a list with suggested values depending on the kind of Internet connection you have. If you use Zultrax P2P simultataneously with other programs that make heavily use of your connection you might want to set this value a bit lower. If you use only Zultrax P2P you could set it a bit higher.
Note that both setting this value too high or too low will have a negative impact on the performance.
The program will not always use the maximum number of connections. The program tries to optimize its perfromance but for that not always all connections are needed.
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