Troubleshoot.ManualConnection

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Updated:

This page has been updated on 2011-01-12 for the release of Shareaza v2.5.3.0.

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This guide has been written to help you manually making an initial connection to either the Gnutella2 or the gnutella network and should only be used after having read the General Connection Problems Guide and the G2 Connection Guide. If the solution presented on this page doesn't work for some reason, you can try setting up a manual connection to Gnutella2 using the eDonkey network.

Introduction

This guide is about making manual connections to either the gnutella or Gnutella2 network. There are some rare situations where this is the only way to go, when the host cache is empty. If you have connection problems, but didn't try the usual steps yet, then read the G2 connection guide first, as it should solve (95% of) all common problems. This guide is only for "when all else fails" and rather for users with some clue about networking.

Usually, when the Host Cache is empty, the Discovery Services are queried to get new IPs of hosts (either Hubs (G2) or ultrapeers (gnutella), which then can be connected to. If there is a problem, so that Shareaza may not query those services, it can't learn about IPs of other network members to connect to and will stay on "Connecting..." forever.

Note that for simplicity, this guide will always say "Hubs", but keep in mind that for gnutella, these central computers that do coordinate the network are usually called "ultrapeers".

Setting up a manual connection

To set up a manual connection, you will need the IP and port of a running Hub that will accept your connection. To find such a host, you will browse a GWebCache (GWC) manually with your browser.

In Shareaza, type F9 to open the "Discovery Service" window. There should be several entries for G2 and gnutella GWCs, if not, you will have to reset the list, as described in the other guide.

Pick one of them keeping in mind that gray icons are for gnutella and colored ones for Gnutella2 (blue) and sometimes for both networks (green), so choose one matching the network you're trying to connect to. If you can't find any GWCs for gnutella, then use this list of GWebCaches for gnutella to add and afterwards access one or several to your list of discovery services.

Now you have the service you want to browse. Copy its URL to your browsers address bar: From Shareaza you can double click the entries and a dialogue will pop up, where you can copy/paste the URL.

Now you are on the GWC page with your browser. On this page there should be a link somewhere that points to the list of known Hub IPs. The link might say something like "Gnutella2 Hosts", "Host list", "Hosts", "Data" or whatever. If you can't find it, try clicking on some links you find there or try again with another GWC URL.

You should now have a list of Hubs, all of the form "IP:port". For example "123.123.123.123:6346". Note that there might be more than one list, because some GWebCaches are for more than one network. It should say which network the list is for.

On some GWebCache pages, the hosts are links that you can click, so that Shareaza may catch the click and offer to connect to that host. But on many GWCs, this is not possible. In that case, go back to Shareaza and hit Ctrl+T. This will open a dialog box, where you should enter the IP address of the host you want to connect to (123.123.123.123) on the left side and the port (6346) on the right side. Then you must choose the right network from the pulldown menu. In this case, it will either be Gnutella2 or gnutella, depending on the list you took the host from. Then click on "Connect" and watch what happens. In the Network Tab (accessible via F2), you should see a gray line with the IP and port of the host. If it turns to either blue or black, then your attempt to establish a connection has succeeded. (Black lines are gnutella connections and blue lines are for Gnutella2.)

Don't worry if it failed and the gray line vanished. This is normal, as Hubs come and go, or they might be too stressed to accept your connection. Pick another host from the list and try again. Try this with at least 20 hosts. As soon as one connects you can stop doing this, but be sure that the connection is stable, watch it for a couple of seconds. If you keep failing, try with another GWebCache.

If you are finally connected, congratulations! Now let Shareaza stay connected for some time, so that the Host Cache may fill up again. If it has been filled again, chances are very high that you won't have to do the described procedure again next time you start Shareaza - as long as you use it regularly. If you don't use Shareaza for several days (in which case the hosts in the Host Cache do expire) or reinstall it (in which case the host cache *might* be cleared), it is possible that you will have to do it again.

Still not connected!

Still no success? If it constantly keeps failing, then there might be something wrong with your network setup. For example there might be a firewall on your computer or on an other network device that blocks P2P connections. This is very likely on a school or office network. In this case. you will have to talk to a local network administrator about this. If you have access to the firewall settings on your computer, then configure it to allow Shareaza to make connections to other hosts on the internet.

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