WINMX Assorted Textfiles/Ebooks.tar/Text - Tech - WinMX - WinMX Port info.txt

Text File | 2003-10-02 | 6KB | 115 lines

**EVERYONE READ THIS PLEASE**


May i suggest something here that should help alleviate the situation.
This below applies to everyone on this group so listen up!

The first thing anyone should do is alter the default ports for TCP and
UDP that WinMX uses, the defaults are TCP 6699 and UDP 6257 (i think).
Everyone who wants to lesson the chance of their, and other ISP's
monitoring and reading the packet header info on sent and recieved data
should change these ports numbers to pretty much any random number.  I
use TCP port 60001 and UDP port 60002 here for incoming connections to
my WinMX, so anything i upload gets transmitted out of my 60001 port
rather than the standard 6699.
ISPs WILL be concentrating on the well known standard ports used for
filesharing, so they will be concentrating on ports such as 5555, 7777,
8888 (opennap, you can't do nothing about these), 6699 (WinMX), 1214
(Morpheus, Kazaa still using this port?), 6346 (Gnutella), etc, etc.
These are default ports used by these services, but our interest here is
in the 6699 TCP port used by WinMX...

When someone connects into your computer to download one of your files,
they connect into your predefined listening port, which is 6699 for
WinMX, you then send the requested file back to the person (you upload)
on that same 6699 port.  If ISPs monitor 6699 (which they more than
likely will do if they have an interest in the filesharing scene
currently) then they will be able to easily recognise those that use
this port often, their logs will no doubt show something akin to..

24.233.133.253:6699 > Lotsa GB transferred!!  WARNING FILESHARER,
PRESUMED SERVICE WINMX.

This is just an example, a possible method of how an ISP could flag
users who transfer high ammounts of data on well known filesharing
ports.

Now, if everyone here changes their defined incoming TCP port (6699) to
something other than this port (i recommend anything between
10000-65000) then it will make an ISPs life much harder, in that they
will not pick up on any flagged data transfers on well known monitored
ports.

This helps solve the issue of ISPs being able to pick out those that are
uploading large ammounts of presumed copyright material, but, the thing
it won't solve is users who download many files using WinMX.  This is
not such a big issue though, i'd be surprised if most ISPs are that
concerned with what their users are downloading.  Now i'll explain why
you and EVERYONE in here can make things that much harder for these ISPs
that are participating in blocking/banning users from using these
services.

Everyone possible needs to change their incoming TCP port, its for your
own good, here's why.

Downloading - When you click a search result in WinMX in order to
download a file, contained within that search result is the IP address
of the user who has the file, and also the PORT in which that user
listens for incoming requests to download files.  Now, if everyone use
the default 6699, then you have no choice but to contact the user with
the file on their 6699 port, thats the default port they have specified
for listening, and if its 6699 then again the ISP could pick out the
6699 info from the packets that you send and recieve, and once again
flag you for downloading high amounts of
presumed copyrighted material using the WinMX service.

This is much less an issue compared to the above explanation of
uploading files using 6699, its the uploading of data (running as a
server - serving files) that really annoys ISPs, and so they will be
much more inclined to ban your arse for serving high volumes of data
using 6699 (presumed WinMX service).  But, should they start to also get
annoyed or involved in the banning or blocking of users who also
download from other people who use 6699, then it gets a lot more tricky,
there is nothing you can do, except...

CHANGE YOUR 6699 PORT TO SOMETHING ELSE.

EVERYBODY needs to do this, whether your ISP is fine about it or not, if
everybody changed their port to any random number between 10000-65000
then the ISPs life will be so much more difficult.  They would have to
monitor not only the commonly used filesharing service ports, but all
65535 TCP ports, they would be pushed to analyse virtually all sent and
received data rather than simply monitor and flag the common filesharing
ports.  DO IT.

I use TCP port 60001 here, whenever i upload a file using WinMX, i
upload from my 60001 port, if my ISP is busy monitoring 6699 then they
won't even notice me, they won't pick up on the port if they are focused
on 6699 will they now.  The other benefit to this is for ALL OTHER USERS
who may have ISPs also monitoring 6699 usage, for these people connect
to me on my 60001 port, and so THEIR ISP will be far less aware of the
activity, because it again does not use the *flagged* 6699 port.  This
would work for me also, if i download from a user who has changed their
default 6699 port to say '53748', then i contact them on 53748 and they
send me the file from their 53748 port, the/any ISP monitoring 6699
activity won't see a damn thing.

So to sum up here, EVERYONE should change their port number(s) to a
random number between 10000-65000 for everyones benefit, your own
benefit, and every other users benefit.

NOTE: If you change your ports you will need to reconfigure your
router\firewall to allow WinMX to use the new ports you specify, just
replace the '6699' information in your configuration with the number you
choose.

Ideally if this is done by a large ammount of the community, then there
will be far less instances of people being flagged for using WinMX or
finding they can't download/upload because of an ISP block either on
their own or others ISP networks.

The next time you start WinMX, just take a second to go into the
options/settings menu and change the TCP 6699 and UDP 6257 to numbers of
your choice, use anything between 10000-65000 and you are set.

Its up to you folks.