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Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade

Posted by samzenpus on from the impossible-task dept.

StonyandCher writes "More and more ISPs are blocking or throttling traffic to the peer-to-peer file-sharing service, even if you are downloading copyright free content. Have you been targeted? How can you get around the restrictions? This PC World report shows you a number of tips and tools can help you determine whether you're facing a BitTorrent blockade and, if so, help you get around it."

11 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Australia is lucky by mrbluze · · Score: 3, Informative

    We forced the monopolist to open their network and we enforced the laws to keep the competition healthy. That's true, and activism still works in Australia - except in Tasmania, of course (the place where you see bumper stickers reading "Tasmania, Smell the Corruption").
    --
    Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
  2. Article Summary by complete+loony · · Score: 5, Informative
    Detecting throttling;
    • Download something popular
    • Call your ISP
    • Read their terms of service
    • Glasnost
    • pcapdiff
    • Vuze plugin.
    Avoiding throttling;
    • Enable protocol encryption.
    • Change the port number to something other than 6881.
    • Tunnel through TOR or some other commercial VPN.
    To which I would add, if you know your ISP is injecting fake RST's filter them out with a firewall rule. A little more complex a task than the expected audience of TFA though.
    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    1. Re:Article Summary by pwizard2 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Tunnel through TOR
      Part of the reason why Tor is so slow is because people are tunneling downloads through it, which kind of ruins it for everyone else.
      --
      "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
    2. Re:Article Summary by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 4, Informative

      Tunneling through Tor is a really shitty thing to do; it's not made to facilitate your downloading, and you put undue stress on people who are running Tor nodes for you.

      --
      "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
  3. Re:I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No" by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Informative

    For what it's worth, the network load induced by BitTorrent can be sufficient to cause (low-quality) cable modems, broadband routers, and similar devices to become flaky, while they are capable of handling the relatively quiescent and straightforward data streams associated with "normal" use.

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  4. Re:I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No" by BLKMGK · · Score: 5, Informative

    That may be the hardware and not the ISP. Some modems puke when they get too many connection attempts - Limewire and Bitorrent can cause this behavior. You might want to try a different cable modem.

    --
    Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
  5. Re:not me by complete+loony · · Score: 3, Informative

    For those ISP's with periodic bandwidth caps, there's already a firefox extension called Net Usage.

    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
  6. Re:Protest by witherstaff · · Score: 3, Informative

    In the US it's against the merchant policies to tack on extra fees for credit/debit. Visa/MasterCard/Discover/Am Ex/etc all are equal to cash.

    But you can give a cash discount. It's wacky and lame and almost no one does that.

  7. Re:Verizon seems alright by totally+bogus+dude · · Score: 3, Informative

    You should be able to set the maximum rate your bittorrent client will upload at. If you set it to 80-90% of your maximum upload speed you should be able to surf and download without problems while it uploads. Experiment and see the performance you get.

    You can also do more general traffic shaping, which will maintain a queue at your router and insert 'interactive' traffic before bulk uploads. A bit more complicated to set up but more robust. If you're the only one using your connection though and BT is the only thing you have uploading, using the client's throttle setting is good enough.

    The reason it slows down your connection is that as you're downloading anything (e.g. a web page) you need to send acknowledgement packets to the sender before it'll send the next packets containing the content. Since you're uploading at full pelt, those acknowledgement packets have to wait behind the larger file upload packets before they get sent. Traffic shaping / prioritization lets them skip to the head of the queue.

  8. Re:Verizon seems alright by whydna · · Score: 3, Informative

    Agreed. I'd specifically recommend the "Wonder Shaper" http://lartc.org/wondershaper/ from the kind, albiet insane, folks at the Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control site.

    Careful though; spending too much time there might cause mental grief (for example, go read Section 12.1.3 of the LARTC HOWTO), but I digress.

    On the other hand, if you're fluent in this and/or like working in the kernel networking stack, shoot me an email/message, cause I've got a fun job for you.

  9. Re:Australia is lucky by fractoid · · Score: 5, Informative

    Some tools ordered high-power (up to a Watt or two, I think) lasers off some website and then pointed them at planes because planes are big and far away and going "yay I can make a dot on a plane" is fun. The pilots, however, thought variations of either "oh shit the world just went bright green and now I can't see" or "we have incoming at two o'clock, prepare evasive maneuvers".

    And in its usual hysterical-nanny way, the government decided to ban ALL laser pointers because apparently it's easier to do that than to try and outlaw 'stupid'.

    --
    Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.