Can you change the port when seeding?

[oehmsmith]

Can you change the port when seeding?

I'd like to know. I can't find any discussions of this suggesting don't do it. But it would seem to me that if you did and closed the existing port when someone is downloading from you then their download will stop. Perhaps you should keep ports open after changing them at least for some time to allow those using your previously advertised ports to finish downloading.

I'd appreciate some feedback on this.

Thanks,

Brooke

[Rolcol]

I think the connections to the old port are maintained, the port is changed, Transmission announces the change of port to the tracker, and new incomming connections are made to the new port.

[oehmsmith]

Thanks Rolcol. You're talking about uPNP right? Does Transmission maintain the open ports forever or does it maintain a LUT mapping current seedings (not sure of proper term) to port such that when the seedings attached to a port have finished the port can be closed?

Sorry if this is pushing the knowledge barrier, I've become pretty curious about this bittorrenting and the specific implementation in the software I use.

[Jordan]

You probably could change the port, but IMO you probably shouldn't. One thing BitTorrent lacks is a good mechanism for notifying peers about your port change. So whenever you change ports you lose a lot of your potential peers for awhile.

[oehmsmith]

Great thanks Jordon. Sorry about the late reply.