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BitTorrent and End to End Encryption

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the end-runs-and-other-oddities dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As ISPs like Shaw and Rogers throttle their bandwidth to counter the growth of BitTorrent, BitTorrent developers are fighting back with end to end encryption. Oddly enough, Bram Cohen, the original brains behind BitTorrent, doesn't support this direction. Is there really anything he can do about it?"

2 of 494 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Who are "Shaw" and "Rogers"? by loconet · · Score: 5, Informative

    Shaw and Rogers are the two major cable providers in Canada.

    Does it affect a lot of people? You bet.

    --
    [alk]
  2. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Traffic analysis systems are available that detect traffic *patterns*. The determining factor for what defines traffic as being VoIP, or Bittorrent, is the patterns flows follow. For instance, a VoIP connection is a very consistent stream of data to one host, where anything file sharing related will be far from smooth, and will be talking to many hosts.

    Even in the case of changing ports, this is easily detected. I work for a medium sized broadband ISP, and we extensively use the layer7 module for iptable which detects flow type based off of a "fingerprint" of traffic; a fingerprint simply being made up of several unique characteristics of a particular packet type.