KaZaA and NAT... news!

[Gurm]

So, many of you may remember that I was struggling with Kazaa and NAT, behind my Linksys router.

It always SEEMED to be working, in that there were never any little red x's to show that I was firewalled or blocked. But downloads ran very slow, and multiple sources almost never worked.

I forwarded ports and ports and more ports, to no avail.

The problem all along was that Kazaa was inserting "192.168.1.100" as my return address, so lots of connections were dying.

*sigh*

Enter KaNAT!

http://www.fasttrackhelp.com/development/ftfakes/

KaNAT is a little program that intercepts Kazaa packets, and replaces the NAT address with your WAN address. Simple, yet SO effective. My speeds went from 10K/sec. on a single source to the maximum my cable modem will do (250K/sec.) on half a dozen sources!

Just wanted to let y'all know about this proggy. It's great!

- Gurm

[Nuno]

Good stuff. It works for me also.

[Wombat]

Wow, works great for me, too!

[UtwigMU]

Tell me about this Kazaa.

What advantages does it have over edonkey (emule) or good quality moderated DC hub.

[Helevitia]

Interesting indeed. OK, now for the 65535 dollar question...

How is it that my system downloads songs from Kazaa without any problems? I am behind a Linksys firewall as well.

Dave

[Helevitia]

hmm, now that I think about it, i am probably not getting full speed downloads. It still doesn't asnwer my question though, which is, why do some connections work and others don't. Theoretically, none of them should work with a return address that doesn't exist.

[Kooldino]

Hmm, Kazza lite always works for me and I'm NATted via Linksys.

[Technoid]

Yes, it always WORKED, but with that program it works a lot better

[Helevitia]

I'm pretty sure I figured it out. This is what is happening...

When you search for something on Kazaa, there is a centralized database of where you can find what you are searching for. this database is advertising your address. Unfortunately, it is advertising your NATed address. When this happens, you try to connect to a non-existant address and bam, it fails.

Fortunately, a lot of people do not have a firewall that does NAT and therefore you get the correct address. This is why you only get a connection that seems mediocre, because the 10 people you connected to, 5 people are NATed and those fail while the other 5 work fine.

Using KaNAT changes your return address to the correct WAN address that your linksys advertises. This gets propogated to the database and tada! You get faster download speeds.

I'm not positive this is the answer, but I am 90% sure.

Dave

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Helevitia
hmm, now that I think about it, i am probably not getting full speed downloads. It still doesn't asnwer my question though, which is, why do some connections work and others don't. Theoretically, none of them should work with a return address that doesn't exist.

They know where the packets are coming from. But the data <I>inside</I> the packets has your 192.x.x.x address. I don't know why it only works sometimes, but both addresses are available.

[Gurm]

Yep. Basically Kazaa = stupid. This program helps.

As for what advantages kazaa has over emule... well, lessee.

Kazaa is simple. Emule is the opposite of simple.
Kazaa "just works". Emule requires an advanced degree in astrophysics.
Even when Kazaa doesn't work, it works. Emule sometimes demands that you sacrifice animals and small children.

- Gurm

[Paddy]

I went to look for an update to K-Lite but they have a *registration* page now.... Anyone actually done this?

[Wombat]

Nope, no way. I always get my stuff from here: http://home.hccnet.nl/h.edskes/mirror.htm

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Gurm
Yep. Basically Kazaa = stupid. This program helps.

As for what advantages kazaa has over emule... well, lessee.

Kazaa is simple. Emule is the opposite of simple.
Kazaa "just works". Emule requires an advanced degree in astrophysics.
Even when Kazaa doesn't work, it works. Emule sometimes demands that you sacrifice animals and small children.

- Gurm

Mmm just seems to be what you posting Kazaa just doesn't simply work. Otherwise you wouldn't have to download another program to get full download speeds. Perhaps I'm missing something.

[Wombat]

Originally posted by The PIT
Mmm just seems to be what you posting Kazaa just doesn't simply work. Otherwise you wouldn't have to download another program to get full download speeds. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Yeah, you are. KaZaa still worked for me before. Not bad for something that wasn't meant to work behind a NAT. Hell, even most ftp implementations out there didn't work right/at all with NAT until recently.