Before we can forward ports for LimeWire, we need to figure out what ports LimeWire is using. Here is a brief walkthrough on how to do that. Go ahead and open up LimeWire.

Click Tools in the menu at the top of your screen. In the list that drops down click Options.

On the left side of this page click the plus sign in front of Advanced. Another list should have appeared under advanced. Click the Firewall Config option in this new list. In the Router Configurations section we want to put a dot into the Manual Port Forward radio button. Now we need to select a port to use for LimeWire. It doesn't really matter what port you choose, but a port between 10000 and 60000 would be a good idea. These higher numbered ports are rarely blocked by ISPs. Once you have chosen a port please enter that port number into the box to the right of the Manual Port Forward box. That port should also be put into the Listen on Port box. I also need to you enter that port number into the box below.

To setup port forwarding on this router your computer needs to have a static ip address. Take a look at our Static IP Address guide to setup a static ip address. When you are finished setting up a static ip address, please come back to this page and enter the ip address you setup in the Static IP Address box below.

Open a web browser like internet explorer or Netscape. Enter the ip address of your router in the address bar of your browser. In the picture above the address bar has http://www.google.com in it. Just replace all of that with the ip address of your router. By default the ip address should be set to 192.168.0.1.

You should see a box prompting you for your username and password. Enter your username and password now. By default the username is admin, and the password is password. Click the Ok button to log in to your router.

Please visit our default username and passsword page, if the username and password shown above did not work for you.

We will list a series of lines here that will show you exactly how to forward the ports you need to forward. Limewire requires you to forward the ports you entered above. Go ahead and enter the settings shown above into the Virtual Server menu and then click Add.

Under Security in the left hand menu click Services.
You should see the following menu.

Click Add a Custom Service

Go ahead and name your service. It doesn't really matter what the name is, but something easy to remember would be good. Select tcp or udp under type. If you are unsure of the type just select both. Last put in the Start and Finishing port numbers. If the service only requires one port, put that port number in both the start and the finish box. You may need to setup multiple services, depending upon the number of ports/port ranges the software you want to run requires. Click Apply when you have finished.

Now we need to go to the second section to continue setting up our port forwarding. Under Security in the left hand menu click Rules.
Once again you should see the following menu.

Go ahead and click Add in the Outbound or Inbound services section. If you are unsure whether the program you are using will use these ports for inbound or outbound traffic, repeat steps 7 through 9 for both Inbound and Outbound.

Select the service we previously created. Action should be set to ALLOW always. Enter the ip address you want to forward these ports to in Send to LAN Server. If you are forwarding ports so you can run a program on your computer, you should enter the your computers ip address into this box. Wan Users should be set to Any, unless you want to limit who you want to connect to these ports. This would be useful, lets say, if you only wanted your office computer to be able to ftp into your home computer. In that case you would put your office computers ip address in both the start and finish box. Generally log should be set to never, unless of course you want to create a log of network activity.
When you are finished with that configuration go ahead and click Apply.

You should see another page of settings that need to be entered into one of the blank lines on your routers Virtual Server page. Go ahead and enter those settings and then click Add.

Under Security in the left hand menu click Services.
You should see the following menu.

Click Add a Custom Service

Go ahead and name your service. It doesn't really matter what the name is, but something easy to remember would be good. Select tcp or udp under type. If you are unsure of the type just select both. Last put in the Start and Finishing port numbers. If the service only requires one port, put that port number in both the start and the finish box. You may need to setup multiple services, depending upon the number of ports/port ranges the software you want to run requires. Click Apply when you have finished.

Now we need to go to the second section to continue setting up our port forwarding. Under Security in the left hand menu click Rules.
Once again you should see the following menu.

Go ahead and click Add in the Outbound or Inbound services section. If you are unsure whether the program you are using will use these ports for inbound or outbound traffic, repeat steps 7 through 9 for both Inbound and Outbound.

Select the service we previously created. Action should be set to ALLOW always. Enter the ip address you want to forward these ports to in Send to LAN Server. If you are forwarding ports so you can run a program on your computer, you should enter the your computers ip address into this box. Wan Users should be set to Any, unless you want to limit who you want to connect to these ports. This would be useful, lets say, if you only wanted your office computer to be able to ftp into your home computer. In that case you would put your office computers ip address in both the start and finish box. Generally log should be set to never, unless of course you want to create a log of network activity.
When you are finished with that configuration go ahead and click Apply.

And that is it! You are done!