Based upon settings found in standard client version .47c

To begin with you will need to download eMule or one of the accepted mods. For this tutorial we are using the standard eMule client which can be found here. Mods will have similar options with which to configure.

It is recommended to use the eMule setup wizard for first time users. Run the exe and follow the setup based on what your line speeds as per your Internet Service provider.

This is the first screen in the setup, click next to continue.

Next screen you can enter a username such as I have done here or simply leave it default.

As you can see I entered yahoo. The next to options are user preference. If you want to run eMule when windows starts and connect at startup then tick the boxes.

Next is the ports/connection screen.

By default the ports that eMule uses are : 4662 and 4672 for TCP and UDP respectively. As shown in the picture above I have changed mine. The reason for this is that many ISP’s are now blocking the commonly used ports of many p2p applications. Therefore it’s better to change them now. There is also the matter of forwarding ports in your firewall or router see below in the advanced setup details a little further in this tutorial. The other option in this screen is the test ports function. When run, a successful test looks like this

Don’t worry though if your test fails, you may need further setup options. The test is not always successful either and can give false results even under ideal circumstances.

Next are the download/upload priority options. Very straight forward.

After that follows the upload chunk option. Depends really on your need of the program weather you want to enable or disable it.

Next is the server screen. Ticking both server and Kad will give you more options to download from as they are 2 separate networks. Also in this box is the safe connect option.

Lastly is the completion screen.

For more advanced options read on.

I am a firm believer in manually configuring my own settings therefore I do not use the first run wizard. The following guide does not use the wizard and is a step by step process.

Knowing your speed settings

  • 1.Install eMule. By default it will install to C:/Program files/eMule.If you’re using a mod most of them come in a rar file and can be placed under the same directory.
  • 2. Unless you already know what your connection speeds are it is recommended that you do a speed test to find out what your line speed up and down is.To do that you can try one of the following sites or one of your own that you may be familiar with preferably somewhere close to your area for higher accuracy.

*Note depending on location, time of day, and volume of the testing server, your results may vary. You may want to run the test a couple of times to verify results. Also test at a server close to your physical location

When testing make sure you have no uploads or downloads going as this will affect your speeds as well.

Figure 1 shows a completed speed test.

*Note that these speeds are in kilobits In order to set you eMule options you will need to convert them to kilobytes.

  • 3. To convert your speeds into kilobytes divide your number by 8. For this example you see that I have 2583 kilobits down, which when divided by 8 equals 322.875, dropping the decimal place and rounding down not up that means 322 kilobytes per second down. For my upload I was told 350 kilobits per second. When configuring your settings only use 80% of your upload max. . You want to be able to reserve the other 20% for any overhead you may encounter, searches etc. By doing this you ensure that your upload doesn’t throttle your download down to compensate. With that in mind To make it all really simple, when you get your upload speed in kbits, just divide by 10 it will be the same as doing all the conversions. You then would wind up with 35kbs*Note Birk also recommends only using 80% of your download as well giving you an additional buffer. It is to you to decide but if your system is lagging try this as well.
  • 5. Now to apply those settings.
    • First Open up your eMule. Go to the options tab and click on it. It will bring up a window that looks like figure 2.Figure 2.
    • Looking at figure 2, scroll down to your connections and click on it. You will see your screen where you add your connection settings as well as ports and connections see figure 3 with my settings.Figure 3.
    • For understanding connections Certain things must be taken into consideration to provide the Best overall value.
    • When running an Operating system like windows 98 allow no more than 100 connections in eMule
    • Most residential routers only handle 255 connections, therefore when using a router unless specified, set your connection limit under this value as your router may lock up or restart.
    • If under no OS restrictions, and with no router in place, you can modify these connections to suit your needs. If the value seems too low where you’re maxing out your connection raise the value. In this case 5000 connections are recommended. If you’re using too much cpu and or memory and you have a high connection count try reducing the value.
  • With the market being wide open competition on routers there is no one sure fire tutorial that covers every single router. Therefore it is best left for the individual user to find out how to properly open ports on their router to allow eMule access.Sites worth mentioning for advanced help on router help:
    • http://www.portforward.com/
    • www.emulehelp.tk
  • Other settings of interest in this tab include hard limit, Auto connect on startup, reconnect on loss, show overhead bandwidth, and the network boxes. These settings are pretty much self explanatory with exception to hard limit. Hard limit essentially is the maximum number of sources allowed for a file. If this limit is reached eMule stops accepting sources for this file. The limit you set is up to you to determine but 1000 Max. sources/file is recommended for most users. High settings can cause more overhead if there are loads of sources therefore you be the judge. You may also want to tick both the Kad and ed2k network boxes so you get the best of both worlds.
  • Finally apply your settings.

Migrating from other ed2k programs.

  • 1. If you were previously using some other from of ed2k client and switched over to eMule You will need to make sure that eMule will by default take ed2k links when you click on them. To do so Go back to your preferences and down at the bottom is the advanced settings option, click on it and tick the box for auto take eD2k links during runtime as seen in figure 4Figure 4
  • In addition if you had any current incomplete files downloading i’m sure you will want to convert them over to eMule to finish. In order to do this first make a copy of your existing temp files to use just in case of an error. Then you click on the tools tab and where you see import downloads as shown in figure 5 find the folder where you have your temp files and click ok. Now wait for it to convert and hash the file. Warning dependant on the number of files this may take a while.Figure 5

Privacy and security

Nothing is 100% secure But by configuring some settings in eMule you can make your client more secure. Under the files tab in your options menu choose the security option. The screen looks like this:

    Figure 6
  • 1. With the advent of ip filters you can block out bad ip ranges from connecting to your client. This will filter clients, bad servers, and scanners trying to connect to your eMule ports. The first option to tick is filter servers. Tick that box and you will block all the known bad servers on the ip filter that you presently have. As you can see the next box has a url in it to update the ip filter from. This is one of several mirrors used for the wins’ ip filter in memory of Lord_anubis. You can also download the ip filter by wins’ via eMule. You can find the ip filter thread here. Once you download it extract the filter into c:/program files/emule/config or wherever you have installed your emule/config folder to. Then hit the reload option. You will see that the ip filter has updated by going to your servers tab.Figure 7
  • 2. Next is the see shared folders option. My suggestion, tick the box that says nobody. This will prevent the odd user from scanning to see what other files you have in share. You never know who’s watching could be some MPAA/IRAA hired hand on their home pc collecting info on users.
  • 3. New since the advent of .47b is a tool called Protocol Obfuscation This is very useful since more and more we are seeing isp’s filtering, throttling, capping users lines. Protocol Obfuscation in essence is a way to try to curb some of that.”eMule help page” wrote:

    Protocol Obfuscation is a feature which causes eMule to obfuscate or “hide” its protocol when communicating with other clients or servers. Without obfuscation, each eMule communication has a given structure which can be easily recognized and identified as an eMule packet by any observer. If this feature is turned on, the whole eMule communication appears like random data on the first look and an automatic identification is no longer easily possible. This helps against situations were the eMule Protocol is unjustly discriminated or even completely blocked from a network by identifying its packets. It is however important to note what Obfuscation is not intended to do: It will not increase your anonymity, it will not make you “invisible” in any way and it will also not protect you effective against eavesdroppers. Also if your network admin has a good legal reason to block eMule (for example a restricted company network), bypassing it may cause you other unwanted consequences.

    Obfuscation is currently available for ED2k TCP and UDP, Server TCP and UDP and Kad TCP communication. Kad UDP packets are not yet obfuscatable.

    “eMule help page” wrote:

    By default, each eMule client (>= 0.47b) supports obfuscated connections to other clients, but doesn’t actively requests them. If your ISP is not discriminating the ED2K Protocol you do not need to change anything and still help other users which may need obfuscation. If you think that eMule is throttled on your network, you should enable this function. Whenever possible eMule will use obfuscated connections and will ask other clients to do the same when connecting to your client. When connecting to a server, eMule will try to establish an obfuscated connection first and only if this fails choose a normal one. There are in general no disadvantages by using this option, except insignificant higher CPU usage and very few bytes more overhead, so you can’t really do anything wrong by enabling this setting.

    You can then tick the option to enable Obfuscation. It is suggested though not to tick the Allow obfuscated connections only box. *Note* there is no reason to activate Protocol Obfuscation if people don’t think they are throthled. eMule will still reply with obfuscated packages if it recieves some.

    “eMule help page” wrote:

    If you enable this option, eMule will only establish and accept obfuscated connections. Clients which do not support obfuscations are ignored, incoming plaintext connections rejected and the automatic server connect will only allow obfuscated connections to a server. You should only choose this setting if you know that the ED2K Protocol is completely blocked on your network, otherwise you will loose sources and therefore slow down your eMule. However if you know that eMule is blocked, then enabling this option is recommended, because it saves connection tries which are guaranteed to fail and therefore would waste time, overhead and resources.

    Lastly Disabling Protocol Obfuscation

    “eMule help page” wrote:

    If for some reason you want to disable the whole obfuscation feature completely you can choose this option. In general for most users there is neither reason nor advantage in doing this.

  • 4. From time to time you will receive messages through eMule about one thing or another. More often than not they are a bogus automated response from another client. Such examples are:
    • ‘[Some name] is an agent from Peer Factor, she advises you to stop your eMule!’ (wording might differ)Apparently this is the latest spamming messages from the leecher mod Ketamine.
    • ‘Need a new eMule Mod? Join the L33cher Team and buy a Ketamine!’Also a ketamine spammer message.
    • “[Warning] Your client is connecting too fast, it will get banned”There is nothing the user can do (within reason) to cause eMule to connect too fast. These messages are also from an MLDonkey client IIRC so represent a very small portion of the ed2k community. Just ignore the message.

    To setup your eMule to ignore these messages you have 2 options.

    • 1. You can choose to filter out certain words for eMule to ignore.Go to options click Messages and Comments -> Filter messages containing: (Separator |) and put that word or part of the phrase there. Doing so will make sure that you will not get any messages containing that word or phrase again.
    • 2. Choose to ignore messages by anyone other than your friends or by valid clients. See figure 8 for both methods.

    Figure 8

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

Quote:

What is low ID and how do i change it?

Low id is the inability of your emule client to properly recieve communication from outside. Usually this occurs due to improper port configurations through a router, firewalls not allowing access, port blocking by your internet service provider, or problems with internet connection sharing with other pc’s on your network. Review all of your settings and try changing the default ports to resolve the issue.

Quote:

Which server is the best to connect to?

I hear this one alot. I guess the best way to explain this is to clarify what a server does. Most new users think the servers host files. That is incorrect. Only clients hold files. The purpose of the server is more or less to bring clients together. When you connect to a server your client hands the server a list of files you are sharing as well as your request list of files you are looking for. If the server has seen clients with those files, it will give you a list of clients that have them. From there your client looks for those other clients. The server sits and waits until you perform a search again or reconnect to another server. Basically any legitamate sever will do. Obviously though the larger servers will have more users which translates to more possible hits upon that first connection, but even smaller servers will suffice. Servers do communicate, and because of source exchange your client will find the files on its own.

Quote:

When i perform a search, what do the different colors mean?

Black file indicates number of sources found between 1-3

Dark Blue Indicates number of sources found between 4-9

Blue indicates number of sources found 10+

Red indicates that the file is currently in your download list

Green indicates file has either been downloaded and completed or is in the canceled file list.

Quote:

I lost all of my servers why does this happen and how do i get them back?

Many times when you loose connection to a server for whatever reason, emule will try to reconnect, if it doesnt connect to that server in so many attempts it classifies it as dead and moves onto the next. If you have it set by default it will remove it after one try. In your options click server and set the number to 10 (the max) next to remove dead server after _ retries. It might help to select a few trusted servers to your static list as well. Even if the get removed from the normal list they should still be in the static list. For updated server lists check here: http://ed2k.2x4u.de/index.html

http://ocbmaurice.no-ip.org/index.html

http://www.gruk.org/list.php

Quote:

Where have all my downloads gone?

Sometimes when emule/windows crashes or for some reason is improperly shut down all the transfers disapear from your list and it looks like your downloads are gone. This happens if a .part.met file gets corrupted. Check your temp folder there should be files in it. If so shut down emule before trying to do any recovery action. You may try recovering these files with metfile regenerator: http://www.bigwillystyle42.com/news/ follow the directions to recover you downloads.

By Adi Moore

Adi MooreFounder
Adi, the anti-censorship crusader and tech-preneur, bootstrapped his first venture in 2001 from his attic into a digital empire. With a heart for open dialogue and transparent technology, he tackles censorship like a pro wrestler. Dive into his deep insights on freedom of speech, internet liberation, and his secret info recipe.

1 Comment

  1. Thanks for the post, Im following most of your advices, Im grabbing Met file regenerator, you never know when it can come in handy.

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