port forwarding question
 

So I'm going to be living in a house next year with 5 roommates (yay junior year in college) and I'm going to be setting up internet connection sharing through a hardware router, most likely something along the lines of a linksys router connected to a switch. I'm curious how to configure port forwarding on the device so that multiple users can utilize the same software.

To be more clear: Let's say Person A and Person B want to use BitTorrent. BT uses ports 6881-6999. On most routers, it allows you to add ports and route them to a specific IP. example:

6881 to 6889 192.168.1.____

How can I set this up so everyone can utilize these ports? I heard you could use a asterisk? So 192.168.1.*

But that doesn't make much sense to me. Or maybe I'm a little confused about what port forwarding does.

I'm also going to probably be setting up static IPs using that or a similar SOHO router. Anyone have any great guides for network configurations?

Port triggering - it makes it so any IP on the on the network is open to those ports. The problem is, apparently they can't all use it at once.

I guess you just have to adjust what ports it uses. It doesn't HAVE to be port 6881-6999, just w/e you configure bittorrent to.

In the networks I've set up I've never had to setup port forwarding or triggering for anything except a few servers. NAT (Network Address Translation) pretty much handles the task. Unless you run a server program that waits for clients to access it you pretty much don't need to mess with port settings on the router.

What you want is UPnP. Current models of Linksys routers all do it. A UPnP-enabled application (like, say, Azureus) can "claim" the ports it needs, rather than having an interal IP manually and statically configured on those ports.

It's true, though, that a port can only forward one place at a time.

Ha I was afraid of that, but I will look into some uPnP

You could do this since it is only a couple people, it wouldn't take too much time and I think it would work (correct me if I am wrong).

give the users static addresses

fwd ports 6881-6899 to person a.
fwd ports 12012 - 12032 to person b.

Configure bittorrent client to use 12012 - 12032 on person b's machine.

I did something similiar at home, worked brilliantly.

It's true that a port can't forward to two different places at the same time, you can forward as many ports as you like as far as I know. It's relatively easy to set up the client (I use tornado's and on rare occasions, Azereus' ) the hard part would be the router, but it looks like you've got a handle on that.

keep in mind if you set up a home network, you shouldn't have to forward ports to surf nor to game unless you are acting as a host. when you send packets, it contains your mac address, which allows for the routing back to your pc.

I do like to have the port forwarding set up for best utilization of BitTorrent, DC++, and the like, tho

I'm sure between you and all your roommates someone has an extra older pc. Load it up with linux, put a second NIC in it, and use it as your router and firewall. $20 for an extra NIC.

Or go buy a 10 user license Cisco PIX 501. A little over $300.

In either case, you'll have 500 X more functionality and options at your fingertips and if you don't already have the know how, you'll get a good opportunity to learn something that can be used in the real world as a marketable skill.