Nay, I said. Nay.

I will put my infinite knowledge of the inter (and intra) netz to work solving the problem that’s been haunting me since my arrival in this glorious city – although my internets be free, my torrents be not flowing over. Now normally, this is something I would have immediately spent time solving, but as the weather has been ultra delightful since my arrival and the trails a plenty, I’ve been distracted.

Not tonight. No, my friends, not tonight.

I began my quest with an open terminal window in OS X, hoping that by ping’ing a local institute of higher education that I would be given the information for the router that my pipeline to the outside world flows through. Alas, that was not to be. So I sat thinking, trying to remember how I had easily seen the IP address of the routers I’ve connected to in the past.

“A-ha!” I said, “… I love that band.”

System preferences, Airport, Advanced Settings. Of course. Once I had that information, I browsed to the IP address, sure that whoever would leave their wifi completely open and with the original name, would surely not change their password or logon.

Correct. Fate was with me in this endeavor. No gypsy tears would be shed on this night (or at least not so early in the night).

Admin, “”. Advanced settings, Allow All, port 27232, forward to static IP address. Check uTorrent.

No incoming connection allowed. Tears. Gypsy tears.

Back into System Preferences, “Where have my Firewall settings moved to?”, I asked. Security. Of course. What’s this? I can no longer control ports, but have to assume that OS X has the AI to know what ports every app that I allow wants open? For some reason I think that this might be where the problem lies.

Back into Terminal we go – sudo ipfw tcp 27232 to 27232. Port 27232 open. Still nothing in uTorrent. Hmmm. Maybe it just needs to be closed and reopened?

Great success! Green light, 1.1MB/s down and I could care less what the up speed is. 29 albums and 20 minutes later, we’re rockin’ and a rollin’.