ANSWERED Port Forwarding issue on BiglyBT

[Shengokai 0]

To preface, I have followed all of the directions in the port forwarding guide on this website where port forwarding and P2P is concerned. I am running the latest BiglyBT and configured the UDP listening port in Bigly to the port that is supposed to be open on AirVPN.

However, the internal plug in for Bigly to check if a port is open is consistently telling me that it is closed, when I test it on the AirVPN site, it gives me an error 110 for TCP on the port but not UDP, and other external tests do not see the port as open. Some additional details:
 

• Bigly is doing the listening is running when I do these tests.
• Bigly is configured to use the forwarded port in UDP.
• I restarted the connection after forwarding the port.
• I restarted my computer after forwarding the port.
• None of my firewalls seem to be interfering and I have turned them off to do the testing.
• Mullvad seems to work fine in its limited capacity.

Ahny suggestions? Should I try qBittorrent?
 

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

48 minutes ago, Shengokai said:

However, the internal plug in for Bigly to check if a port is open is consistently telling me that it is closed,

Several reasons.
First, you cannot simply check UDP as you would check TCP – UDP does not expect replies, whereas TCP explicitly waits for ACKs.
Second, BitTorrent is first and foremost a TCP protocol – it would make sense for BiglyBT to only check TCP.
Third, UDP is not used itself – uTP is. BEP 15 defines UDP for contacting trackers only, and BEP 29 defines uTP as a transport protocol layered on top of UDP.

Plus: Using TCP alone in 2023 is the correct way to torrent, even if not connected to a VPN server. Note the date of the uTP BEP: It's been designed to tackle the networking problems that existed back then – TCP was apparently "too fat" for some setups. Now, we're having Gigabit fiber lines in our homes where 2.5 Gbit/s ethernet is coming, and even wireless setups can reach that with ax/WiFi 6. Congestion is the very least of our problems now.

[Shengokai 0]

Update! Apparently there were some funky settings in Windows Defender. After fixing those, the connection checker shows that the ports are open on IPv4, but not on IPv6

Thanks for that, following the directions here: Do you allow p2p? How can I optimize performance of eMule and BitTorrent with AirVPN? - AirVPN I configured both the TCP and UDP ports using the forwarded port in my client area, disabled UPnP and the rest, and the application is bound to the Eddie connection. However, I'm still getting the 110 error, and Bigly still says that the test failed.

Could it be the case that the port I was given by the service is invalid? Is there something I'm missing? The only other thing I could think of is disabling BiglyBT's VPN helper plug in or to forward the port I'm using through my router, however, the directions also say NOT to forward the port I'm using on Bigly through my router so I'm at a loss.

Edited ... by Shengokai
Issue partially resolved

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

11 hours ago, Shengokai said:

Update! Apparently there were some funky settings in Windows Defender. After fixing those, the connection checker shows that the ports are open on IPv4, but not on IPv6

I don't follow. Where does Windows fit in all this?

[Shengokai 0]

The issue was that some of the rules in the Windows Defender Firewall were set not to allow incoming connections for BiglyBt, which was preventing me from connecting to peers even after I'd assigned a port in AirVPN. For some reason the firewall wasn't actually turned off when I tried testing port forwarding earlier, despite Windows telling me it was.