Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade

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."

Comments

Article Summary

[complete loony]

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.

Re:Article Summary

[pwizard2]

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.

Re:I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No"

[FooAtWFU]

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.

Re:I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No"

[BLKMGK]

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.

Re:Australia is lucky

[fractoid]

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'.