Char said:
I agree that it used to. My son used to use it in the era of 2001-2004
and I had to forward some ports for it to work for him. That's not
required anymore. I haven't done a packet capture, but I suspect the
BT client is simply initiating one or more outbound connections, which
of course become two-way connections once established. Port forwarding
isn't required in that case.
It still is. Just think what would happen, if everybody did *not*
open ports - your outbound connections would not be able to connect to
anything. The only reason that BT works in your case is because your
client connects to people who *have* some ports open / forwarded. Nobody
can connect to you from the outside, though, and the quality of the
torrent suffers, You get half the connections you otherwise would.
Depending on the torrent, the speed can be much lower. I can attest that
I get much better torrent speeds at home, where the client configures
the UPnP router, than at work, where there is no UPnP device, and the
only connections of my BT client are the outgoing ones.