DNS Root Name Servers Explained for Non Experts

[Worldlife]

All want is a download of the Guns and Roses Paris concert from:-
http://www.btmon.com/Audio/Unsorted/...r.torrent.html

Stuck in a mire of technology and Port Forward seems to have provided good working advice!!!

It needs to know my "Name Server" for Virgin Media (I'm on their ADSL Broadband service)

Found figures 86.27.173.203 for Virgin Media from the Speedtest but it seems much more complicated than that.

No wiser from reading the article
"DNS Root Name Servers Explained for Non-Experts"

[Austin_KW]

Confused, why do you need your nameserver for a download?

But,
Your nameserver will usually be your router.
It will run a utility called dns masquerade that will handle dns requests. If is does not know how to resolve a query it will forward the request on up the chain (to the virgin server in your case).

All of this should be setup for you using dhcp. Unless you are switching to static IP addressing then you need to manually set the gateway and dns to point to your router address.

[Worldlife]

Thanks Austin....

You have it! Torrent could not seem to find port and I was therefore following the instructions in Portforward to create a static address.

We need to have the correct Name Server IP addresses. If we do not, you will not be able to browse the web. There are ac ouple ways to get these. The first way is to log into your router's web interface, and look at your router's status page. On that page you should see an entry for DNS Servers, or Name Servers. Write down the ip addresses of you Name Servers. Another way to get the correct Name Servers to use, is to give your ISP a call. They should know the IP addresses of your Name Servers right off. If they ask you why you need them, you can tell them you are trying to setup a static IP address on your computer. If they try to sell you a static external IP address, don't buy it. That's an entirely different thing that what you are trying to setup.

There you go! That should confuse everybody

Maybe I will by the DVD of the Japan concert although it is not so good as the Paris one!!!!

[Austin_KW]

Not the clearest is it,

Just use your router address for the dns and gateway.

Also not always mentioned but some routers need save & reboot before the port mappings will take effect. It saves them a lot of code if they only have to do the mapping setup at the bootup sequence.

[Worldlife]

Think the problem I was having might have been linked to Zone Alarm.

This is my first download using uTorrent of a 4.03 GB file...

16.6% = 465 Mb uploaded

53 kBs down and 36kBs up with 15 hours download time to go.

DU Meter whilst posting here and the download in progress is 600 kbps down and 290 kbps up.

Is the download going OK? Am I reasonably safe with Netgear router firewall and Windows XP firewall replacing Zone Alarm? (Anti Virus and anti pop up software also in place)

BTW noticed that router software, supplied by Virgin Media, still had a non specific password which I have altered to my own.

[Austin_KW]

If you know what you are doing it may be ok to turn of the ZA firewall. You will not have outgoing protection so if you get spyware etc you will not notice it phoning home using the xp firewall.

You should be able to configure ZA to allow your torrent program. From memory it is under firewall & programs tab. Find the torrent program and allow IN and OUT access to both the trusted and internet zones.

Not that you would But if your are torrenting copyrighted material you need to firewall some addresses so you dont connect to the RIAA, MPA, IFPI etc. You may need PeerGuardian or some torrent programs have a plugin that does the blacklisting for you.