UPnP Times Out

[Kinack 0]

Hi! I have been using ApexDC++ for years now but am having trouble with the latest update (1.5.3). I have UPnP enabled on my router and my router is set to clean out the UPnP table every 10 minutes. The problem is that ApexDC++ seems to only send UPnP updates on start-up with the latest version. Thus, after starting the program I am able to use the UPnP forwarded ports, but if I leave the application idle and come back to it, ApexDC++ does not refresh the UPnP ports and they are no longer forwarded (searches don't work, downloads don't work, etc.).

The workaround is to manually forward the ports.

[Mek 13]

Are you using uPnP with some other application? How does that behave?

Well, to me, it's first time I see it that the application should periodically send requests to forward ports. It should be only sufficient to map ports at application start and unmap them on application exit...

[Kinack 0]

Are you using uPnP with some other application? How does that behave?

Well, to me, it's first time I see it that the application should periodically send requests to forward ports. It should be only sufficient to map ports at application start and unmap them on application exit...

I use UPnP with uTorrent and it works fine. I have the Tomato firmware on my router and by default it cleans out old UPnP ports every 10 minutes. I am only having trouble with the UPnP since I upgraded to 1.5.3. I don't know much about UPnP, but to me it does make sense that the router would want to clean out old UPnP ports.

I read a bit about Tomato's behavior for cleaning and by default the UPnP threshold is set to 20 which requires that I have 20 mapped UPnP ports before the router will consider cleaning up old ones. I never have more than 5, so perhaps ApexDC++ is unmapping the port when it should not be unmapping it?

I am disabling the UPnP cleaning on my router and will test Apex to see if this has any effect.

[Mek 13]

Well, I don't know how uTorrent behaves here... But maybe someone of the developers knows more about uPnP and could enlighten us on how Apex does it? :)

[Kinack 0]

I use UPnP with uTorrent and it works fine. I have the Tomato firmware on my router and by default it cleans out old UPnP ports every 10 minutes. I am only having trouble with the UPnP since I upgraded to 1.5.3. I don't know much about UPnP, but to me it does make sense that the router would want to clean out old UPnP ports.

I read a bit about Tomato's behavior for cleaning and by default the UPnP threshold is set to 20 which requires that I have 20 mapped UPnP ports before the router will consider cleaning up old ones. I never have more than 5, so perhaps ApexDC++ is unmapping the port when it should not be unmapping it?

I am disabling the UPnP cleaning on my router and will test Apex to see if this has any effect.

I disabled the UPnP cleaning on my router and left ApexDC++ on overnight. When I first started the program the ports were forwarded and they appeared on the UPnP page of my router. This morning I went to check my router and the UPnP ports are no longer forwarded. If I try to search in ApexDC++ or share files it fails because the port is not forwarded. The connection checker also fails. This makes me think that ApexDC++ is actively unmapping the UPnP ports because otherwise they should still be mapped.

I am running one other test to be sure that it is not my router somehow still cleaning the ports itself: I opened ApexDC++ then closed it via task manager. By closing it uncleanly, the ports are not unmapped and still show up in my router. If after a few hours they are still mapped in my router, then I would assume that the problem really is that ApexDC++ is actively unmapping the ports when it shouldn't be (or perhaps not remapping them when it should be).

[Mek 13]

Great investigation you are doing there. Let us know with the result :)

[Kinack 0]

Great investigation you are doing there. Let us know with the result

My router's firmware did clean out the old port eventually, even after I disabled cleaning and closed ApexDC++ through task manager (thus ApexDC++ did not unmap the port itself). I upgraded to the latest Tomato firmware and the same behavior occurs. I still think ApexDC++ may be at fault, though, because this problem never used to happen to me and because uTorrent manages to keep its ports mapped. Perhaps ApexDC++ should perform a check periodically to make sure the port stays mapped? Or perhaps it should attempt to remap the port when a user performs a search or attempts a file transfer.

Has ApexDC++ changed UPnP behavior recently? What is ApexDC++'s ideal behavior for mapping/unmapping UPnP ports?