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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?"

76 of 494 comments (clear)

  1. Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want.. by takeya · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Wrong Solution by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The proper solution when your ISP is deliberately crippling your service is to get another ISP. You paid for that torrent traffic, and if they don't carry it that's as good as stealing. Let your ISP know how you feel, and don't do business with crooks.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:Wrong Solution by Mrs.+Grundy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Your suggestion assumes that everyone has a choice about their ISP. There are still many places in this country where broadband access is only available through one or two local monopolies.

    2. Re:Wrong Solution by Hrothgar+The+Great · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Wrong Solution by TheSpoom · · Score: 3, Informative

      Good thinking. Except there are two companies that run the high-speed lines here, Rogers and Bell. Ignoring the fact that Bell Sympatico DSL is quite slower than my tier of cable for a moment, what happens if Bell also filters Bittorrent? Are you suggesting that the appropriate course of action then would be to move?

      On a more practical note, use port 1720 (used by Rogers' own VoIP digital phone service, so they can't and don't deep packet filter it) and if that doesn't work (remember to restart your client and forward ports accordingly) try BitComet with the encrypted header option. Worked fine for me after a bit of fiddling.

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
  3. The Goodness of Open Source by imoou · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    --
    Uncensored Google results requested and delivered by email
  4. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ISPs are happy to lose those customers.

  5. when asked about this, Brahm said, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Well, I'm not sure it's such a good idea. Cheeseburgers are delicious, let's go get some."

  6. "Is there really anything he can do about it?" by cerberus4696 · · Score: 3, Funny

    A) no. B) Even if he's really for it, he can't come out and say so, because he's jumped into bed with Hollywood with both feet.

  7. Sniffing shape-able streams by Jon+Luckey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FTA:

    "...a wire protocol which transfers a lot of data bidirectionally and consistently looks like line noise with no header is only marginally more difficult to identify then one which uses fixed ports."

    Sounds like a call to camoflage the traffic as several pipes between peers. Not just one tcp/ip connection, but several, with a jitter function to pick which pipe is used at the moment so it does not look consistant

    --
    -- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
    1. Re:Sniffing shape-able streams by MyNymWasTaken · · Score: 2, Funny

      How would that prevent it from being lots of bidirectional line noise?

    2. Re:Sniffing shape-able streams by Chrispy1000000+the+2 · · Score: 2, Funny

      You know, that's gonna be a pain to set up with the router unless...

      Opens router config; set port port forwarding on for 1 through 65535.

      What could go wrong? ;)

      --
      Sig
    3. Re:Sniffing shape-able streams by merreborn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      FTA: "...a wire protocol which transfers a lot of data bidirectionally and consistently looks like line noise with no header is only marginally more difficult to identify then one which uses fixed ports." Sounds like a call to camoflage the traffic as several pipes between peers. Not just one tcp/ip connection, but several, with a jitter function to pick which pipe is used at the moment so it does not look consistant

      Assuming that by "pipes" you mean "seperate TCP/IP connections established over several ports", and that you're assuming that ISPs will only ever monitor, as you call them "IP/port tuples", then your argument holds.

      I, however, challenge the premise that ISPs will only ever monitor "IP/port tuples", and not simply by IP. Even if they don't now... Why wouldn't they?

      Fact of the matter is that P2P traffic looks very different from normal web browsing on the grandest of scales. A P2P user transfers many gigabytes, both upstream AND downstream to many other low-bandwidth users -- most of which have IPs that are trivially attributed to DSL/cable providers, making it clear that they are users, not businesses (no major websites are hosted by SBC DSL users, comcast cable customers, etc. etc...) You can probably profile a P2P user by raw upload:download ratio alone, with 90% accuracy. The average web user downloads many times more than they send upstream.

      That's brahm's point.

  8. Encryption won't work anyhow by LunaticTippy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    --
    Man, you really need that seminar!
    1. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by Yaztromo · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

    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.

    3. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by interiot · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

    4. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Similar discussion has taken place at the gnutella developer forum, and the client gtk-gnutella already has encryption in place for the same purpose.

      This post describes how ISP filters peer to peer gnutella traffic. To quote:

      CableVision, for example, is known to drop incoming Gnutella connections and Gnutella HTTP requests. This has absolutely nothing to do with port filtering. You can easily verify this by modifying your HTTP request. Something like "GET /uri-res/N2R?urn:sha:* HTTP/1.0" will be cause the connection to be dropped

    5. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Uhhh, once the encrypted session is negotiated, the only in-the-clear headers are the IP/TCP headers. Moreover, SSL negotiations all look the same, so if the implementers were to use SSL (which I don't think they do... but that's a mistake, IMHO), then there would be no way to tell one SSL-encrypted session from another.

    6. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by qwertphobia · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's MUCH more to bandwidth management than just blocking ports. Modern bandwidth management solutions go past layer 3 and detect which applications are running across a network flow.

      Even if a system can't understand the data being transmitted, there's a good chance that the system can understand either what type of encryption is being used, what application is sending the data, or even both.

      In order for applications to communicate they need a well-documented set of rules for communications. Open Source applications and standardized applications use public and well-documented sets of rules.

      --
      Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
    7. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by Lumpy · · Score: 2

      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.

      Bzzt! nice try! you get to leave with the home game!

      Bittorrent is not a massive upload but a tiny upload typically throttled pretty good with a massive download.

      That looks like itunes use, Streaming video use, etc.. Those services that they like to toute are the reasaon to buy your broadband!

      Granted they can look at source IP's and only allow high speed from "blessed" providers. THAT is the only way they can detect it. but if I am on a VPN back to work I certianly look like I am a bittorrent running along.

      There are lots of services that use lots of incoming bandwidth. Unless they do a whitelist, they will not be able to shut it down. And if they do the whitelist, they will piss off their customers.

      ISP's can not stop it. they can try, but us damned users will always find a way around.

      Damn us users. why dont we pay full price and not use our internet like good customers.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    8. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by DigitAl56K · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And how is the ISP supposed to be able to detect the difference between encrypted and non-encrypted binary data? By performing a MITM attack during the public key exchange when any connection is first established (the details of the exchange necessarily being part of the bittorrent protocol). The ISP is perfectly situated in terms of routing to do this and because keys must be exchanged early on in the session there is probably not too much overhead associated with doing so on a large scale (i.e. for many customers and many connections per customer). I could see it becomming a feature on high-end network hardware. Maybe wiretap laws might prevent it, or the DMCA, but IANAL so I don't know for sure.

    9. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by jambarama · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I am sorry to say that the growing trend to throttle bittorrent is not based entirely on issues of piracy (although it is somewhat to blame). Many ISP's main reason for this is quality of service. While you may not intend to suck up all of the bandwidth that your ISP has, Bit torrent is notorious for sucking up bandwidth. Bit torrent has a rather poorly designed (for packet efficiency) protocol. It is terrific for other things, but not packet efficiency.

      Bit torrent has the problem of opening a lot of connections (the larger the torrent storm, the more connections). While each of these connections to other seeders/leechers may only be passing small amounts of information, they tend to take up a lot of the routers memory (especially for very slow connections that stay open even though they don't pass much if not any information). This kills a router. You might not ever notice it at your own home but having a lot of people on torrents can take drop a router, and make the internet slow for all of the other users using your ISP.

      While I don't agree with the actions of these ISPs I thought others might want to know other reasons for throttling this type of bandwidth. As for breaking this throttling your options is very limited. Most ISPs use a layer2 packet shaper, which has the ability to determine the actual content of a packet regardless of port. This is quite common these days.

      As far as I know the only real option to get around it requires that you have a server outside of your ISP's network. If you have such a server or a friend somewhere with a nice fast connection (up and down), you would need to set up a tunnel. On top of that you would most likely need to setup a secure tunnel to avoid the packet shaper from understanding the packet data. You can do this using an SSH tunnel, or you can try to setup a site to site VPN tunnel (both of which you would want encrypted). Doing these things is not easy tasks and requires a fair amount of knowledge concerning the way networks works. There are several how-to's discussing how to setup a VPN tunnel and/or SSH tunnel.

      Like I said these are not for the novice. It would however be a great opportunity to learn quite a bit more about networks than even the more network savvy people. Chances are most people are just going to have to live without torrent, or switch to a provider that doesn't throttle torrent activity.

    10. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Man in the middle doesn't work against Public Key Crypto.

      Alice wants to send an encrypted message to Bob, so she encrypts her message with Bob's public key. Thereafter, the only way to decrypt the message is using Bob's private key. Since the private key never gets exchanged, the ISP never sees it, and therefore cannot decrypt the message. When Bob wants to send Alice a response, he encrypts it with her public key, which makes the message decryptable only with Alice's private key (which she never sent).

      In PK, there is no "key exchange" in the usual sense of the term, because in standard crypto algorithms, the exchange needs to be made without the key falling into the hands of those who shouldn't be listening in. What actually happens is more akin to "key publishing," because the public key can be made available to anyone. All they can use it for is to create messages that only you can decrypt.

      --

      You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

    11. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by Cramer · · Score: 2, Informative

      they tend to take up a lot of the routers memory

      Nope. You're confusing "router" with firewalls, NAT, and other forms of connection tracking and stateful inspection. Most ISP routers don't do anything like that. The closest you'll find is flow caching which is just a fast routing process... it's optional and there are limits on how much memory it can consume. When an idle flow expires, that doesn't break the connection; the router will simply follow normal routing proceedures and build a new flow record for subsequent packets. Routers don't care what the traffic is; they only care about where they need to send it. (and in some edge cases, where it came from.)

      That's not to say routers don't have limits. Every router has a maximum throughput both in packets per second, and bits per second. PPS is generally limited by routing speed -- how fast can the router determine where to send this packet. BPS is limited by the physical hardware -- how fast can bits be copied/signaled between interfaces.

      One of the key reasons ISP's are resorting to throttling is shear bandwidth. ALL ISP's oversell their connectivity. (It's the only way to make money on the low end where consumer's live.) They don't have the capacity to give everybody their 5M down/384K up all the time. And it gets worse... for a cablemodem, a single channel is 30Mbps down and 10Mbps up (+/-). When one is saturated, the other is starved -- the ACKs have to get in there somewhere. So, that 5/384 setup can support 6 people down and 26 people up, at once, per channel. There are literally hundreds of modems on each channel. Honestly, I'm surprised anyone can max their connection for any measurable duration.

      (DSL is just as bad, if not worse. Having worked for a DSL provider, I know it's worse.)

    12. Re:Encryption won't work anyhow by Yaztromo · · Score: 2, Informative
      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.

      Unless, of course, that VOIP service is Skype, which uses a peer-to-peer protocol to multi-route packets.

      Yaz.

  9. Here's my take on the whole Bram Cohen thingy... by perigee369 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  10. BitTorrent and Who? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    BitTorrent and End to End Encryption

    Who is "End", and why are they partnering with BitTorrent to end encryption?

  11. What are ISPs selling? by MrNougat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
    1. Re:What are ISPs selling? by LordLucless · · Score: 2, Informative

      Which is why the FTC in Australia has warned ISPs about advertising their services as "unlimited" if they do any rate-limiting or shaping (which pretty much all Australian ISPs do).

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
  12. Asymmetric connections by Ambush+Commander · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Don't forget part of the problem is that our connections are assymetric. 100+ kb/sec for downloads, but ~10 kb/sec for *any* uploading is the best you can hope for.

    1. Re:Asymmetric connections by Adult+film+producer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm with a canadian isp in ontario and my bw maxes out at roughly 380-400KBytes/sec downloading.. uploading is capped at 75KBytes/sec. When I pass 90 gigabytes of bw usage they start sending me emails, asking me turn off possible viruses and whatever.. at 120 gigs they phone me up and ask me to upgrade to the deluxe edition or whatever it is heh.

  13. Of course he can't do anything...directly. by Pantero+Blanco · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He released it as an open source project. He can't do anything about people modding it any more than Linus Torvalds could do anything about someone modding the Linux kernel--not that he would.

    However, also like LT and most other major project figureheads, he holds a certain amount of political sway. His disapproval may be enough to keep some developers from pursuing certain paths. Of course, not everyone will care about what he thinks, but he does have SOME power.

  14. As a Rogers customer... by abscissa · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would like to say I am totally fucking furious that Rogers feels it can do this.

    I appriciate that Bitorrent constitutes a gargantuan proportion of network traffic. I appriciate this is a problem.

    However, the reason that I feel this is unfair, which nobody seems to have mentioned yet, is that Rogers customers are limited to 60 GB of transfer total, both ways, each month. (Unless, of course, you upgrade to the $50 account + modem rental which is 100 GB). If you exceed this limit, it's not just a matter of waiting until next month -- it is a matter of having your account shut down.

    I think it is fair to do one or the other, but not both. I once wasted three days trying to figure out why Bittorrent wasn't working, only to find out it was thanks to Rogers. This was just as they had started shaping network traffic so I had no furious posts on message boards to turn to for the origin of the problem.

    Sadly, there is no alternative to Rogers for high speed access in my area. It's Rogers or dial up.

    1. Re:As a Rogers customer... by boojumbadger · · Score: 2, Informative
      They trashed my torrenting. I was getting the full 300k from torrent then couldn't get 10k. when I complained by email they sent me this reply:

      We understand your concerns regarding issues you are experiencing with your peer-to-peer (P2P) applications. To ensure a consistently high level of service for all Rogers customers, it is necessary to put limits on the amount of network bandwidth available for certain types of applications. This process is called traffic regulation (rate-limiting, traffic shaping, throttling).

      As peer-to-peer (P2P) applications have grown in popularity, their share of overall network traffic has increased dramatically. In particular, the application Bittorrent uses all of the space available for uploads. To ensure that a relatively small number of applications do not slow service for everyone, Rogers limits the space available for P2P uploads. This ensures all customers have a high level of service for time-sensitive tasks like sending email, requesting web pages or voice messaging.

      Rogers does not block any type of Internet traffic or application. Nor do we monitor the content of customer communications or activities on the Internet. Our traffic regulation is based on the type of application, not the way it is used.

      What a crock. I paid for the bandwidth and they hosed me big-time. I tested this by downloading various linux torrents that were well represented. Anyone know what else I can use to fully use my upstream bandwidth? I suppose I could 'wget -N' a static link in a continuous loop to saturate the bandwidth.
  15. 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]
  16. Why not just use IPSEC? by ebob9 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why don't the clients create a simple IPSEC connection between clients and tracker (Or client-client in a trackerless version). Granted, I'm not an IPSEC expert, but wouldn't this better accomplish their goals?

    This would keep the connection and communication private, and they could run the standard BT protocol on top of IPSEC. On top of that, ISPs won't shape IPSEC down like Bit torrent traffic - because they would anger corporate VPN users.

    ebob

  17. Also because by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If Bittorrent goes out of it's way to become unthrottleable and hard to detect, it will lead to it being outright banned in many places, and the ban enforced through more draconian means.

    Like here on campus, we would prefer not to tell people what they can and can't do, however bandwidth is finite. We cannot afford to buy gigs and gigs of bandwidth just to allow people to P2P all the time, at least not without a tuition hike. The solution is to use a packet shaper, which puts P2P at a lower priority than other traffic. Usually, the line isn't maxed so P2P works as normal, however if the connection is slammed, non P2P traffic gets prefernce.

    Works very well, P2P works and is generally very fast, and other traffic doesn't get bogged.

    However, if it starts hiding from the packet shaper, things may be made a bit more compulsory like "You will make no use of Bittorrent unless it is for an approved research project. Failure to comply will result in a referal to the dean of students and possibly expulsion." Now I'd hate to see it go that way, but it will if it there's no reasonable way to keep P2P from clogging the network.

    1. Re:Also because by ArbitraryConstant · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why not just give people a limit on how much bandwidth they're allowed to use and leave it to them to decide how much of that goes towards P2P?

      --
      I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
  18. Opera and BitTorrent by RonnyJ · · Score: 3, Informative

    In semi-related news, BitTorrent Inc. and Opera announced today that Opera 9 will offer BT capabilities. I do remember that a beta of Opera 8 had BitTorrent built in, but that hasn't been present in versions released since (i.e. since it went freeware).

    http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2006/02/06/

  19. Re:BitTorrent's image by lilmouse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  20. I'm a Shaw BT user by 0xA · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I use Shaw so aparently I'm a "victim" of this traffic shaping. I can't figure out what everyone is so up in arms about his for. I'm not a heavy BT user but I use it to grab a couple TV shows evey week, it works fine, usually takes me a few hours to ge a BSG episode tops. I got the entire second season of the OC for my g/f in 2 days. It's not like BT doesn't work anymore, if nobody told me about this I wouldn't have noticed.

    With cable you still share a certain ammount of bandwidth with the people on your trunk, espescially on the upstream. Unfortunately some people are bandwith hogs. I see this as protecting me from the guy down the street with the warez fetish more than anything else.

    Has anyone found themselves unable to use BT because of this?

    1. Re:I'm a Shaw BT user by abscissa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm a Rogers user and I have found BT to be unusable because of this.

      However, nothing personal, I REALLY REALLY wish that people who wanted to download TV shows, movies, apps, music, warez, etc. would use USENET.

      USENET is a bit more difficult to use at first but it is fast as fast can be if you get the right server, and you are far less likely to run into trouble with anyone. I could (if I wanted) grab an entire season to a TV show in less than two hours. Probably more like 45 minutes even... (seriously... Rogers is fucking fast)

      Using USENET would also really really really cut waaaaaay down on that traffic that is bothering the hell out of the ISPs... (epecially for the cable providers since it all but eliminates the upstream)

      Sadly, Rogers no longer offers Usenet services because they are really cheap and greedy, so you have to pay for a premium news server, which is like $9 a month.

    2. Re:I'm a Shaw BT user by mrtroy · · Score: 3, Informative

      I am also a Rogers user...

      And I am downloading at 200kb/sec+ on a torrent right now...

      Firstly, check your router to make sure you have the appropriate ports opened/forwarding

      Then, do NOT use the standard port for BT.

      Cheers

      --
      [I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
  21. Re:Faster than dial-up? Oh no it's not. by Abcd1234 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You didn't RTFA, did you? They're using layer-7 filtering to shape BitTorrent traffic, in both directions, throttling it down to a mere trickle. I know this because I'm a victim of it. :(

  22. Encryption or obfuscation? by fpepin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    People seem to be confusing the 2 issues.

    Encryption here is just a mean, they don't care if the ISP sees WHAT they're sharing, they only care that the ISP recognizes that they ARE sharing (and throttling their connection accordingly).

    I find the argument agains the tracker taking care of it quite silly. The guy from uTorrent says that the ISP would simpy find or modify the packet saying that obfuscation is wanted.

    I would guess the ISP would just throttle all encrypted traffic going to random ports before it starts identfiying specific packets. They're as justified to limit it to BT as they are to do it with all unrecognized traffic.

    BT is costing them a large amount of money so they start to throttle it. That means that they're not going to sit idly and not respond if it becomes obfuscated/encrypted.

    I don't think it's an arms race that BT can win at all. If the ISP wants to limit the amount of bandwidth you're using, they will limit it, one way or another. For example, the ISP might throttle everything after a threshold per month is exceeded.

    That's the main point that Bram is making, and I find it difficult to disagree with him.

  23. traffic shaping my ass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    cox.net straight up won't let you seed
    once you get 100% of the torrent all incoming connections are closed

    1. Re:traffic shaping my ass by Cobain · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is simply not true. I have cox and have never had a problem seeding. This sounds like user error to me.

      --

      ----------------------
      58.0% slashdot corrupt
  24. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by Dster76 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    One thing I've done since I switched away from a packet shaping network is told all my non-geeky friends who are deciding what service to get to STAY AWAY from it [Eastlink] and switch to the good guys in my area [Aliant].

    Maybe we can hurt these companies through word of mouth.

  25. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by Shinaku · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No.. No they're not. My ISP, TalkTalk, lied about the service they were providing me - even after I enquiered about p2p (GNUtella, Bittorrent) which they assured were totally unrestricted, they were quite happy to sign me up to a 12 month contract and totally restrict all traffic from the p2p clients. Don't worry, I've complained about a month ago and I'm intending to get out with out paying theur £70 cancellation fee. This is for users like me, who have been screwed over by greedy ISPs. And I welcome our new encripted overlords.

    --
    -- :>
  26. Re:What does this even mean? by UserGoogol · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just because he doesn't have ADHD doesn't mean the man can't appreciate a cheeseburger now and then. What are you, some kind of racist?

    --
    "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
  27. One or two? Try none. by thepotoo · · Score: 2, Insightful
    A lot of people live in rural areas, and don't have anything. Not even dial up. On /., you don't hear a lot from these types, but they're out there.

    I live in an area where the best I've got is dial-up (and 28.8k at that). Once an ISP gets out here, I'll be the first to switch to them. ON ONE CONDITION: They allow bittorrent traffic.
    Seriously, everyone I know who has gotten broadband has done so for P2P. Warez kiddies ^W^WLinux distro hunters are the cable companies biggest subscribers.
    They are shooting themselves in the foot by not supporting us.

    --
    Obligatory Soundbite Catchphrase
  28. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by catch23 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'd say that a significant number of users use p2p type stuff. Everyone I know at work uses some type of p2p software... eventually it will be impossible to restrict users of p2p unless you cut off all your users.

  29. I remember... by Coleco · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...way back when the monthly b/w limit on Roger's was 1gb.

    That's right, 1, as in uno.

    Now people are whining about 60-100?

    How much warez are you fools downloading anyway?

    The fact is that at the end of the day ISPs pay for bandwidtch per byte. I say charge people that 'need' >100gb per byte more then the rest of us.

    This isn't a new problem. As long there's been broadband there's been people that absolutely, positively, MUST saturate their entire bandwidth 24/7/365, and these people cry bloody murder when someone tells them they can't.

    Bittorrent just happens to be the way that warez junkies do this today. Think about it. If you're shaw/rogers, and you see that 90% of your bandwidth usage is bitttorrent packets being sent by 1% of your customers, what would you do?

    1. Re:I remember... by Hanthus · · Score: 2, Funny

      I remember when computers had 1 megahert That's right, 1, as in uno. And now you want gigahertz?

    2. Re:I remember... by JahToasted · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The proper reaction is to make the price something like $20/month + $1/GB downloaded. So if you just check your email you pay $20. If you download 5 or 6 movies you pay $26. If you have your system downloading 24/7 you would end up paying something like $80 per month.

      They can't have it both ways. If they advertise it as a flat rate / unlimited, people are going to use it that way. If some people are using more bandwidth than others, then have your price reflect that. Then people will be a little more frugal in their downloading.

      Just keeping the flat rate and prohibiting people from using their connection for what they want just makes people angry and is just stupid.

  30. olde europe by wwmedia · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well thankfully here in europe we have no monopolistic companies trying to throtle torrents or have plans for to tier up the internet (yes im aware of the pun)

    Here in ireland im currently on 3mbit NTL cable (soon to be upgraded to 10) with 40GB cap which is not enforced, i download over 100gb monthly

    so pack ur bags and move back to the old world!

  31. Re:North Continent by Big_Al_B · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You forgot "No $40/month broadband".

    I work at an ISP. We pay $50 per meg per month measured at the 95th-percentile of our monthly usage. We can use our bandwidth in essentially any legal way, and we get a pretty rock-solid SLA for our money.On the flipside, our providers should not go bankrupt supporting the service we buy.

    I buy cable broadband at home. I pay $40/month flat rate and I agreed to a pretty restrictive AUP that allows no servers or P2P applications on my end of the connection. I could violate the AUP, like I'm sure many do. But if I did, I would not whine and complain when my ISP addresses the issue. Oh yeah, if I paid at home what I pay at work, I would be paying about $120/month for internet access. But then I could use P2P...whoop-dee-do!

    Networks are very, very expensive. If my broadband provider doesn't stay in business, I won't be able to use P2P--or any other 'net application.

  32. Not the first time... by rincebrain · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Bram Cohen was also originally against having an upload limiter in BT clients...but when everyone else had one, lo and behold, the official client gets one.

    I wonder if this will turn out the same.

    --
    It's only an insult if it's not true.
  33. Grammar Nazi! by Celsius+233 · · Score: 2, Informative

    That should be "BitTorrent and End-to-End Encryption".

    --
    Denham's Dentrifice, Denham's Dentrifice, Denham's Dandy Dental Dentrifice, Denham's Dentrifice Dentrifice Dentrifice.
  34. Re:BitTorrent's image by swilver · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Encrypted traffic will eventually become the dominant traffic over the internet, no matter what happens really. Encryption is cheap and easy, and IMHO the main roadblock to it being used for almost everything is the fact that the HTTPS protocol with its certificates and signing authorities (and the yearly fees you have to pay them) is total overkill for most websites.

    A simple encrypted HTTP protocol without all the certificate crap would be JUST FINE. Just negotiate some form of encryption, exchange some random keys and do your stuff (like SSH basically does everytime you make a connection) -- this can be done complete secure, the only thing you donot have is a 100% guarantee that the website your talking to is really who they say they are -- in other words, just like normal HTTP, except that your ISP can't see what you are doing, nor can anyone else except the destination site (whoever that may be).

    Having the option to use encrypted HTTP should involve nothing more than a flip of switch, just like having your HTTP stream gzipped compressed

  35. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by jmcneill · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wow - didn't know that. Here in Nova Scotia, they've been behaving respectably (at least with broadband, can't speak for any of their other services). Sorry to hear that. Do you have an alternative over there?

    Rogers and Aliant is it. The final nail in the coffin for me with Aliant was when I was away on business for a few weeks and they decided to start filtering inbound SMTP traffic. I called and asked about it and they claimed they weren't doing any filtering. When I replied with tcpdump output proving my case, they forwarded me to their abuse department. A few weeks without mail, so I immediately switched to Rogers when I got back.

    Not only do I have a faster service (5Mbit with Rogers at the time, when Aliant was offering 2 or 3Mbit IIRC), but they only filter outbound SMTP (not a problem), I have a relatively "static" IP address, and I don't have to deal with the hassles of PPPoE.

    Also, bundling our cell phones, television, and internet is a huge win. The Vibe Vision service was shut down, and reborn as Aliant TV some years later.. but it hasn't been rolled out in any areas other than Nova Scotia.

    By the way, In the late 90s, things were different. Fundy Cable (who was purchased by Shaw, then by Rogers) had a one-way cablemodem. NBTel (part of Aliant) was trialing 10Mbit/10Mbit HFC service in my neighbourhood. For $39.95/month! It was incredible. The ride lasted a few years before they sent out an email about a "service upgrade", which was going to be $2/more per month, and mandatory. The "upgrade", of course, was the switch to 1.5Mbit ADSL with PPPoE.

  36. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    No... I can't speak for the U.S., but in the U.K. you should not do this. Pay the bill to get away from the ISP and restore your service with another ISP -- this puts you firmly on the right side of the law. Then sue the original ISP in the small claims court... this is not the terrifying activity it sounds like. It's done locally and the small claims court is setup to deal with this sort of thing quickly (and hand hold newbies through the process), you don't need solicitors etc etc.

    quick introduction. People do insist on stubborning it out, and often it's the worst mistake you can make.

  37. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by S.+Traaken · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you were the first type, you change to a supplier that charges based on usage.

    If your supplier offers no restrictions on usage, it is reasonable to expect no restrictions. Particularly if you have entered into a contract to that effect.

    What I suspect, though, is that in cases where people are complaining about p2p limiting, there was a we-will-do-whatever-the-hell-we-like clause (or even a we-will-do-whatever-is-necessary-to-maintain-netwo rk-performance clause or more likely we-will-do-whatever-is-necessary-to-control-our-co sts-you-bandwidth-whores clause) in the contract with their ISP that has not been read or comprehended by the complainers.

  38. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by kenthorvath · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

  39. I don't like the look of this brewing arms race. by Terri416 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Encryption is the wrong tool for the job.

    To get around ISPs throttling bt, the program should adapt it's ports and protocol negotiation so that it looks like other services (html, VOIP, etc).

    Making bt fully protocol-adaptive would be take away all traffic shaping control from ISPs. Their response to this would likely be to look for high upload traffic from users and firewall off the users to stop all incoming connections.

    There are counter-moves to this (client-mode bt), but an arms race between users and their service providers is going to be messy and one-sided (they write the T&Cs).

    I think it's better that users should vote with their wallets.

  40. WRONG assumptions. by C10H14N2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you have a _residential_ contract, you are distinctly _NOT_ being given an unlimited, dedicated 4.5Mb/s connection for $49. If you want to run a 24/7 hog like Bittorrent, purchase a business plan with guaranteed bandwidth and uptime, no port blocking and no QoS throttling--all stated clearly in the contract and available from all major ISPs.

    They are well within their rights to ensure that everyone paying a certain price is given the same level of service. They're rolling out FIOS here. It can handle 622Mb/s and at $50/month, you get, basically, 1% of that. To not have to implement some kind of QoS throttling on your bandwidth-hogging butt, they'd have to run a separate backbone to every 100 houses and, guess what, that would cost a ton of money. So, voila, tiered pricing.

    Deal with it.

  41. Lots of DSL ISPs (Was: Re:Wrong Solution) by tachyonflow · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.

    Keep in mind that in many areas, there are lots of ISPs that can provide you with DSL service. This service is provided by either 1) using the telco's DSLAMs and ATM networks to connect your home to the ISP (the most common method), or 2) using ISP-owned DSLAM equipment co-located at the central office (Speakeasy/Covad, various local ISPs). If you're just using the telco to move your bits across town to the ISP, I doubt the telco is going to bother traffic shaping your data.

    I mention this because I think a lot of people don't realize there are more DSL options than just the local telco's internet service. When you go to the telco's home page, they certainly don't go out of their way to let you know about this. There are lots of small and regional ISPs that would love to have your business.

    The biggest problem you might encounter with DSL is that many telcos require you to subscribe to phone service before they'll allow you to subscribe to DSL. I know this is definitely the case in BellSouth territory. I've heard that you used to be able to get a "dry copper" (i.e. "alarm circuit") DSL line to an ISP in BellSouth territory (a friend of mine used to have this sort of hookup in Oxford, Miss.), but they've since put an end to that. Where I live (Denver, Colorado), the telco (Qwest) does offer "Naked DSL" so you don't have to bother with a landline if you don't want one.

    I have DSL with a local ISP who runs their own DSLAMs in my neighborhood, and it works out well.

    David

  42. Supplier of the infamous traffic shaper by WoTG · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For those who are interested, the people who supply Shaw (who happens to be my ISP) their traffic shaping software (or is it an appliance?) is Ellacoya Networks. This bit of info was from some forum that I found when I first noticed that my maximum BT upstream got cut by about 60%.

    FWIW, for those who aren't traffic shaped yet, don't be surprised if you are next if you are on a cable ISP -- the nature of the shared network means that the throughput gets choked for everyone when the upstream traffic gets too high (and ACKs get delayed). DSL providers don't really care about upstream as much, they worry more about total traffic which they can throttle in other, cheaper, ways.

  43. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by tylernt · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Pay the bill to get away from the ISP and restore your service with another ISP -- this puts you firmly on the right side of the law. Then sue the original ISP in the small claims court... this is not the terrifying activity it sounds like. It's done locally and the small claims court is setup to deal with this sort of thing quickly (and hand hold newbies through the process), you don't need solicitors etc etc."

    Good tip. Our American friends, though, will want a laywer rather than a door-to-door salesman. ;)

    --
    DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
  44. BitComet by izomiac · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yet another feature that BitComet already has. Sadly, I expect Azureus and uTorrent to ignore this fact and implement their own standard. BitComet version 0.62 or 0.63 will probably conform to it. My point is, why doesn't anyone ever seem to know about BitComet's basic feature set? It's obviously a well known client. In fact, the last swarm I was in it was about equal in popularity to Azureus and BitTornado (only a couple people were using uTorrent, and someone was using the official client). If some feature has a possible exploit (like adding the DHT network as a backup in case the private tracker goes down) then everyone is up in arms about it. The useful features seem to go without notice, like UDP NAT bypass (great if you can't recieve incomming connections), an Intellegent Disk Cache (I WANT my torrent client to use more RAM so hard drive writing frequency is kept reasonable), Packet Header Encryption (the feature in question), the ability to share peer information even if the tracker goes down (implemented long before Azureus added DHT networks), sharing peer information between tracker updates (causes faster downloading), chatting with other BitComet users in the swarm, and others.

  45. Your buffet example reminds me of a story... by Kelmenson · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Back in the 60s, my uncle was a poor college student, participating in the "field" portion of "track & field" (discus, hammer, javeline, etc). He needed to eat lots of food, and didn't have much money to pay for it. The solution he and his teammates came up with was going to all-you-can-eat buffets.

    Needless to say, the poor restaurant owners were not real prepared for a dozen 250+lb college students to come in and eat many platefuls of food, and the owners were not very happy. They asked them to leave, and when they said "no, it's a buffet, we are just eating 'all-we-can-eat'", the owners called the cops on them.

    Well, the cops showed up, and listened to the complaint, and talked to them. And decided against the owner! "If the sign says 'all-you-can-eat', you can't kick them out just because they can eat more than you want them to eat."

    Not really applicable to the topic, but just seemed an appropriate anecdote. Not only internet companies want to cut off people who use over the average!

  46. Transfer limits per month? by blankoboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wasn't the appeal of 'broadband' advertised to be 'always on, high speed, and unlimited transfers'?

    It sure seems like all you folks in North America are getting a seriousl wallet raping by the telcos/cablecos.

    Here in Japan (and I'm sure it's the same in S. Korea), we don't have any such tranfer caps. Bandwidth is also a non-issue here with 50MB ADSL and 100MB (up and down) FTTH. Also, the pricing is quite reasonable and ususally comes bundled with VOIP services. Some providers even offer TV over IP (Softbank BB).

    Japan and S.Korea are living the broadband pipedream that North America had dangled in front of it but never got (until GoogleNet shows up, seeing as they are buying all the remnants of that pipe dream - unused dark fiber).

  47. Re:North Continent by Kattana · · Score: 2, Informative
    As many others have pointed out the networks themselves are not that expensive, the networks, include\ing upstream of the ISP's are over priced.

    Every fraction of a second the lines are dark is investment lost, it costs a fixed ammount to install, and small cost of electricity to run the network, if its not being used than the capacity is wasted.

    If north american ISP's would live up to the high bandwidth - fibre, true broadband they have been promising there would be no problem with quality of service, no problem with high bandwidth apps.
    south korea and japan have 100mbit, 1gbit networks, 10 and 100mbit is available in many places in europe, if ISP's in north america would stop being driven by short term profit and invest something in the infrastructure as other places have done, even if its only 10/10mbit to the customers and new backbones, all the issues around bandwidth scarcity would virtualy dissapear.

  48. The details of IPSEC by AKosygin · · Score: 2, Informative

    From my experience (and I could remember this wrong, as I haven't touched IPSEC for over 5 years), the IPSEC protocol in the way as-is wouldn't work well with BitTorrent because it requires a PKI infrastructure so that the two ends can authenticate and exchange keys before the actual communications. And a PKI isn't easy to setup, and will require a central CA to handle all the certs.

    Furthermore, IPSEC, by its old protocol has NAT transversal problems as in it cannot do NAT. And even the IPSEC with the NAT option, I think it is called IPSEC NAT-T, still requires the encrypting certificate to have a name matching the IP of the computer. Hence, requiring a static IP on the computer and/or the public interface on the router. Furthermore, it would cause problems if the two computers on both ends have the exact same IP in the private network (192.168.0.5 or something) as that would lead to interesting conflicts.

    IPSEC isn't design for such a use like BitTorrent, it is more for securing the communications on a MANAGED local network, or a VPN, or a tunnel through the internet between networks, so that no one can sniff your data or spoof the destination/source computer. I believe in this case, IPSEC is the wrench while BitTorrent is the phillips screw; wrong tool for the wrong problem.

  49. Re:Encryption isn't the solution we need, or want. by toleraen · · Score: 2, Informative

    Huh, that's funny. Where is your proof of this? I would argue that geeks utilize bandwidth in a much more efficient way. Having done three years of technical support for a university, it was always the non-geeks that were generating the most traffic. When we did traffic reports, those generating the most traffic (a consistently high amount) in the dorms would have their network ports deactivated, and I would have to go figure out why. I only remember going into one geek's room to find out why. He was sharing out a whole lot of music. The rest of them? Malware, zombies, worms/viruses, etc. from unpatched, unprotected machines that are sitting wide open on the Internet. Most geeks downloaded locally available files (ala programs like Direct Connect), or used BitTorrent but had their upload throttled back a bit. Non-geeks just setup KaZaa or Limewire, and share out their whole C:\

    So I would have to disagree with you from an ISP perspective.