BitTorrent and End to End Encryption

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?"

Comments

Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want..

[takeya]

The bigger problem is customers paying their ISPs, many of whom hold a local monopoly, and then the ISPs go around and turn their backs on the customers, leaving them without services like bittorrent that have a clear and growing legal use. Perhaps a boycott of ISPs that do that would be in order... except for that whole monopoly thing.

The Goodness of Open Source

[imoou]

Bram said he suspects that some developer has gotten rate limited by his ISP, and is more interested in trying to hack around his ISP's limitations than in the performance of the internet as a whole.

Isn't this what Open Source is about? The ability to make changes to a software to suit one's need? And if there are enough users, followers, developers and contributors (see Ubuntu from Debian), the new branch because a thing of its own.

So the day Bram opened his code, BT is subject to the same kind of treatment and only users can decide which way it will go.

Aren't there cases where someone compiled a BT client to act like a seeder with high ratio but is an ultimate leecher?

Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want.

[Dr. Evil]

ISPs are happy to lose those customers.

Encryption won't work anyhow

[LunaticTippy]

The ISPs will simply throttle anything encrypted unless it pays extra, or something similar. If we accept this situation, or find short-term workarounds it will become worse and worse.

My connection is severly throttled by my pathetic aDSL upload speed, but that's another bitch entirely.

Re:Encryption won't work anyhow

[Yaztromo]

The ISPs will simply throttle anything encrypted unless it pays extra, or something similar.

And how is the ISP supposed to be able to detect the difference between encrypted and non-encrypted binary data? What detection routine do you use to detect between, say, encrypted BitTorrent data, unencrypted VOIP data, an FTP file transfer, and random data?

Traditionally, you can filter the ports -- but nothing prevents software from changing what ports it uses, and there are several applications which can handle a dynamic port exchange. How barring just blocking or filtering on specific ports, how do you detect that data is encrypted, when the purpose of encryption is to make the data appear to be random to an outside adversary?

Yaz.

Re:Encryption won't work anyhow

[interiot]

Answer: Easy.

As TFA notes: encrypted or not, you're still pushing a massive amount of upload and download traffic. That in itself is enough to get noticed.

Second, the more data there is to analyze, the easier it becomes to distinguish noise from data.

Third, Again as TFA notes, if a lot of connections are being made, they can analyze the first chunk of data sent by both sides. If it's an unencrypted connection, you'll see a roughly consistent set of data being sent across at the beginning. If even the headers are encrypted, and you use BitTorrent a lot, eventually it will be pretty obvious.

Here's my take on the whole Bram Cohen thingy...

[perigee369]

Bram may not like it, but one of the best things about sharing the source code, is that the 'market' so to speak will determine now where this protocol goes. If Bram doesn't like it, that's his right, but I expect the masses are going to use the program that best offers the features they want. And uTorrent and Azureus are the two 'big boys' on the block right now. And if someone can improve it further on down the road, the whole bittorrent history has shown that users will try it, especially if they aren't happy with the 'old' program they use.

What are ISPs selling?

[MrNougat]

So when I buy an internet connection from an ISP, who says the connection is 4mb down and 256K up, and then I actually want to use all of the bandwidth I have been sold - then the ISP wants to crack down and limit my usage?

Someone should sue [insert favorite ISP here] for bait and switch. If what they're providing is 4mb/256K burst speed, with lower rates for continuous, then that's what they should say in their advertising. This is hardly a far cry from the shady camera outfits online (i.e. PriceRitePhoto). You pay every month for a service, and the service you're actually provided differs greatly from what you thought you purchased.

Re:Wrong Solution

[Hrothgar The Great]

Most people have only one or two choices for ISPs, and MAYBE three if they're lucky. In my area, I have one cable provider, one telco providing DSL, and I think there's some satellite company that is expensive and has extremely horrid bandwidth. Basically, your cute idea that everyone should just up and switch ISPs is a pipe dream at best.

Re:BitTorrent's image

[lilmouse]

Nonsense. Is using ssh guarenteeing illegal activity? Not at all. If I want to use my ISP to download the latest Ubuntu (and I will soon), I damn well want it via BitTorrents. And if I encrypt it, that's my business too!

--LWM

Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want.

[kenthorvath]

Let's imagine a water company which has two types of customers: some who use water when they need it and some who leave the water running all day, the sprinklers on the lawn all night, etc.

Well, except that in this case, you're not paying the ISP for the water but for the capacity of the pipes. The water is coming from sources outside of the ISP and thus isn't a scarce resource. In fact, when you signed up for your pipe-service, you understood that you were paying for the maintenance and capacity of the pipes, which is often claimed to be "unlimited", but upon having them installed, you notice that the same pipe is feeding both your home and your neighbor's home, and their neighbor's home.

you were the first type of customer, wouldn't you be annoyed if you found out you were paying the same as the second type? Wouldn't you expect them to pay more, or perhpas face some restrictions?

If the first type of customer gets upset at the second type of customer, then they should also get upset at buffets that charge the same amount of money to every customer regardless of the amount that they intend to eat. But then, that is the whole concept of a buffet, isn't it? You enter into an agreement with the provider knowing that you are getting a service that you value appropriately enough to pay for. If you think you should be getting a better deal because some people consume more per unit price than you do, then nothing stops you from trying to make your own arrangements, but if the business is not willing to enter into such an agreement with you, then you are free to find another who will. This is the market place at work, and how other people choose to spend their money has no impact on how you should choose to spend yours.