I’m new to Soulseek, just downloaded a bunch of music I like. I want to not be a leach and give back to the community by sharing the things I downloaded, however Mullvad doesn’t allow port forwarding. Is it possible to share files on Soulseek without having open ports? Does everyone who shares stuff on Soulseek use no VPN/a VPN with port forwarding?

  • pruneaue [she/her]@infosec.pubEnglish
    7·
    2 months ago

    My understanding is that one of the two people involved in the exchange needs to have ports forwarded. So you just have access to less files and less people have access to your files

  • hexagonwin@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    My understanding is that someone with port forwarding can find one without, but not the other way around. I enabled port forwarding for a while (without VPN) and my upload increased a lot. Though I’m a bit scared with my IP being linked to it so it’s off for now…

  • sneak100 [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    5·
    2 months ago

    I think the limitations of not setting up port forwarding are that the upload speed is garbage and only one person can download from you at a time, but it’s still doable from what I understand

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      2 months ago

      Yup, that’s how I do it tbh. I’m on mullvad and unwilling to switch at this point. Kinda sucks, but that’s how it is

  • Blxter@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I have been sharing with no VPN so far as I currently can not port forward with my VPN. As for for sharing with no open ports the way I understand it is you might be able to share sometimes but if someone wants to view all your shares etc they can not communicate with you. Could be wrong. Ngl there are tons of leaches on SLSK over the past couple of months.

    • 0laura@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      4·
      2 months ago

      not using a VPN isn’t really an option for me, Germany REALLY hates people trying to share files

      • Blxter@lemmy.zipEnglish
        21·
        2 months ago

        The US (for me) does as well but the only way I believe they can know if you are sharing files are if they search for those same files go to your profile and then get the IP from there. So it is possible but in my experience has not happened others experience may vary.

  • IronKrill@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    This may be unhelpful, but I ended up port forwarding through my VPN. I seem to recall errors with UPnP and while my connection to slsk.net is still buggy, it works better now I’ve manually forwarded. I had already paid the extra $2 a month to my VPN for forwarding so that I could get better torrent performance, so.

  • pipes@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    I don’t use a VPN but still had to assign a port interval or something to Soulseek from the router; other software maybe picks a more sensible (lower) port number?