How to Enable Port Forwarding for Litecoin Mining?

Question

I've just started Litecoin mining, and I've realized that my blockchain takes eons to download, even though its only less than 4GB. I've read several other posts on the same problem, but none of them seem to give a comprehensive step by step tutorial on how to port forward. Could someone please explain to me the details on how to port forward for Litecoin mining? I've gotten this far:

Thanks!

EDIT: Ok, I've set up a rule for my firewall to allow the Litecoin ports, but now I'm stuck at setting up a reserved address. Here's a picture:

EDIT: Alright, I've found my device on the list of devices on my LAN (Tim-W) and clicked the button saying always use the same IP Address. Is that what I'm supposed to do? BTW, there has been no real change in the number of connections, or connection speed with the Litecoin Network since I had done this. It seems that the peak was about 13 connections after I set a rule for my firewall to allow the Litecoin ports, then it just went downwards - I'm stuck at around 39 weeks left to download off the blockchain:

Something else I noted was that I couldn't assign the Litecoin port settings to my device either.

Answer 1

There are countless router port forwarding guides on the Internet, this isn't Bitcoin/Litecoin specific.

Anyway, you've got the port right, you need to set your computer up on a reserved local address so that your internal IP address doesn't change when you reboot. Then you need to assign that custom "game or application" you have created to your newly reserved local IP. You may need to allow the port on your computer's firewall too. That should do it.

Saying that, Bitcoin/Litecoin is peer-to-peer and doesn't require the port opening it will function fine without it. The only difference will be that people are able to connect to you which will give your node more peer options so it could make it sync faster. Of course it could also make you sync slower because you'll be helping more peers sync.

Depending on your Internet speed it could be the uploads that are making your downloads take aeons, or it could be a slow/busy disk. Remember, it's not a website - you're not going to download 4Gb from the other volunteer peers at the same rate you might for other downloads.