Transmission seems to be having some issues

[Snowdog]

Hi all.

I've had a read through some of the help pages but I'm not very techie & I can't find anything that connects to my issue. (Or my brain.)

I'm hoping someone will read this & have some kind of clue what I should be trying.

I'm running the latest version of the the Transmission app. (4.0.6) on a 2017 MacBook Pro running Ventura 13.6.7 & it's always performed well but suddenly I'm having a real issue.

Hardly any of my torrents will start to download. Most (but not all) just sit there "waiting for metadata".

Some download, which would imply that it's not completely broken.

Some, having got the metadata, just sit there on 0% which could imply a seeding issue. (I'm used to waiting & I have a crappy internet with limited speeds but it's worked better before & nothing's changed.)

I use the Malwarebytes VPN but I'm pretty sure it's worked fine since I installed that, too. In any case, it doesn't improve when I switch the VPN off.

When I go into the Transmissions preferences, I have a red dot & it says the peer listening port is closed. The "randomise" checkbox is unchecked, the "automatically map" checkbox is checked. The red dot remains regardless of how many times I click the "randomise" button. When I switch off the VPN, I get an orange dot saying the "Port check site is down".

I can't find anything in the Malwarebytes prefs to do with port forwarding.

Basically, I have no idea what info is important & where I should be looking.

I haven't changed anything but something's changed. Can anyone help?

[rstone5]

What used to work

settings > network >
automap - on
randomize - off.
my vpn assigns me a port number, when not on vpn, seems to work anyhow. is this possible?
or use a # in range of 52,001 and 54,999 has worked before. ymmv

sorry, no expert here.
gd all