Encrypting BitTorrent to take out traffic shapers
Written by Ernesto on February 05, 2006Over the past months more BitTorrent users noticed that their ISP is killing all BitTorrent traffic . ISP’s like Rogers are using bit-shaping applications to throttle the traffic that is generated by BitTorrent.
But, at the same time two of the most popular BitTorrent clients are working together to implement header and message stream encryption in order to take out these traffic shapers.
Currently both Azureus and uTorrent included this new form of encryption (specs) in their latest Beta’s. The fact that these two clients are actively working together to implement this new feature is promising and will make this form of encryption the new standard since the users of these two clients cover the majority of all BitTorrent users.
There are two “encryption modes” available.
The 2 different payload encryption methods plaintext transmission and RC4 provide a different degree of protocol obfuscation, security and speed. Where the plaintext mode only provides basic anti-shaping obscurity, no security and low CPU usage the RC4 encryption obfuscates the entire stream and not only the header and adds some cryptographic security at the price of spent CPU cycles.
The question now is.. Does it work? and how effective is it? If it works it will definitely offer a great solution to all BitTorrent users who suffer from traffic shaping ISP’s.
Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol reacted quite negatively on these new developments. He questions the need for encryption since only a few ISP’s are actively shaping traffic. Among other things he also fears incompatibility between clients and increased cpu usage. Although these arguments can be countered quite easily, developers should keep them in mind.
But the fact is, if this new encryption method is launched successfully it will be a huge step forward for the BitTorrent community.
Previously: Speed up your torrents II
Next: Opera integrates BitTorrent in their Browser
131 Responses
Yeah, it works, I had some friends use the feature, and according to them, it got them back on using torrents effectivly.
Kiltak
[Geeks Are Sexy]Tech. News
wow you have freinds that use torrent wish my friends knew even how to switch a pc on.
Brams gone commercial
Completely worthless. I’m extremely disappointed that people who know enough to develop BitTorrent clients don’t know enough about networking to realize that this is completely pointless. Sure, encrypting the stream may get around a few packet shapers, at the moment but, unless they reconfigure BitTorrent to run everything, incoming and outgoing, over port 80 or 443 then it will be trivial to block BitTorrent.
BitTorrent is far too reliant on specific ports and far too reliant on those ports being open inbound. Because of this, it is ridiculously simple to block BitTorrent traffic. Encrypting the stream will not hide the fact that it is BitTorrent traffic. It will only prevent someone from identifying what the BitTorrent traffic is transferring. This may be a good thing for pirates but, it won’t stop the network administrator from blocking BitTorrent ports completely.
The truly successful P2P app will allow multiplexed up/downloads over SSL port 443. This will be encrypted and will appear like most other https applications. It will also traverse most any firewall and be stupidly simple for the user to operate. The down side is that it would require a centralized server to make it work so, it isn’t desireable for piracy but, I think this is also a good thing. I’m sure you’ll disagree with me on this one though because you no doubt feel that “sharing” music is your God given right and is not stealing or piracy.
Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent is doomed because it doesn’t work as well as it should (multiplexed downloads should perform far better than BitTorrent), it relies too heavily on opening obscure inbound ports, it is too hard for the average AOLer to get working, it is too easy to block.
Bram now speaks for Hollywood so it’s hard to take anything he says seriously anymore.
well george…
bittorrent may not be working as well as it should, but right now there is none witch performs better, is as reliable, is open and as simple to use to the end user…
i’d be happy if someone gets out something better…
Bram now speaks for Hollywood so it’s hard to take anything he says seriously anymore.
George,
I’m sorry to say, but you are completely ignorant when it comes to this issue.
> BitTorrent is far too reliant on specific ports and
> far too reliant on those ports being open inbound. Because of this, it is ridiculously simple to block BitTorrent traffic.
Bittorrent is reliant on no specific port at all. Your free to use any port.
> Encrypting the stream will not hide the fact that it > is BitTorrent traffic. It will only prevent someone > from identifying what the BitTorrent traffic is transferring.
Unfortunately this article is poorly written, so this line is excused. It is only the headers that are being encrypted. This prevents the data from being identified as Bittorrent traffic. The actual “stream” of data being sent is not being encrypted and doesn’t have to be.
It does work. I am with Rogers and was getting no more than 5kb/s downloads with 50+ connected seeds. Installed uTorrent 1.4 beta with encryption and last night got 50+ kb/s from only 15 seeders. Future looks bright!
You want p2p that is military grade encrypted? You want privacy for your ip? try searching MUTE and Sourceforge- btw can use any port.
Ah, stop raggin’ on Bram people. He developed this kick-ass P2P thing and he’s actively advocating NOT to use it for piracy. Which makes sense for him because I imagine he would like NOT to be sued into oblivion, yes?
But encryption is the natural next step for P2P clients. After decentralisation comes obfuscation. Isn’t it funny to see how the RIAA and MPAA with their crazy lawsuit antics are actually propelling P2P technology forward faster than ever before?
BitComet has had this feature for a while now. As for port blocking, most ISPs can’t really justify that since Bittorrent does have legitimate uses. That’d be like blocking FTP. Of course, it’s not too difficult to make Bittorrent run entirely over port 80, but most people just stick to the default ports. As for inbound connections, BitComet also has a method of getting around that at times (UDP NAT bypass). It’s actually a really progressive client, I’m not sure why so many people hate it for the reason of the month. Sadly, I’d give it 5:1 odds that uTorrent and Azureus implement their own version of packet encryption so it isn’t compatible with the existing BitComet standard, and BitComet will eventually have to change their implementation (just like with tracker-less downloading).
@Former Rogers Subscriber
You might think that the article is poorly written but I maybe you’re just a poor reader.
If you take a look at the “specs” link you can see that there are two encryption methods. One encrypts the header and the other one also the stream
If they get this truely working… hurrah! I remain sceptical however. I mean, it’s pretty complex stuff to get everyone working together on an encrypted network, right?
What really needs to be made, instead of going around and making sure that every single bittorrent client out there is using encryption, is a sort of local proxy for bittorrent, that would add the encryption. That way, instead of adding the feature to every client, a single proxy could be made for each OS (Mac, Linux, Windows, etc.), and from there, give users to option of sticking with whichever client they want.
For the record, I use my laptop more than anything, and Azureus is too resource-intensive for this, and, because I’m running Linux, uTorrent isn’t an option.
Any takers?
im worried about intercompatability between clients, i run a command line perl torrent program on my server half way round the world (only way i can torrent, long story). if suddenly everyones becomes encrypted, my command line torrent program is going to be left behind.
Also there is the problem of several countries laws prohibiting civilian cryptography… so torrenters would be breaking the law in more ways than one?
For linux, if you don’t want to use azureus, your best bet is probably a curses based client. I recommend rtorrent, but you can also use bittornado (which also has a curses interface and a gui interface.)
I’m not sure that RC4 is good enough.
Quoting wikipedia: “RC4 falls short of the standards set by cryptographers for a secure cipher in several ways, and thus is not recommended for use in new applications.”
Bram has done a damn good job – every program has to start somewhere and there will always be room for development.And it still works.
Also your ISP can block any port they wish if they want to.I know my ISP blocks ports already as a security precaution but currently no bittorrent ports are being blocked.
I know you can select any port that you want but if your ISP sees your port 80 with gigs of traffic they will issue you with a please explain.
In Australia most broadband companies require you to sign a AUP – Acceptable Use Policy. If you violate this they suspend or disconnect you and no appeals.
I also use a mac and exposure to PC but as it stands bittorrent is incredibly easy to use and if you dont know how too use it you will only need to be shown once and you are on your way.
Also with some of the traffic stats listed above I have seen huge amounts of connected seeds but only getting 2 k/s. Some seeders throttle or stop their uploads but still appear as connected.
Hi:
This is something that is only going to get WORSE with end-providers over time. VOIP, BT, Http server, SMTP, etc.
The real way to work around this is to setup remote VPN to a IP provider who will not do any shaping on you.
get a block of 5 IP addresses remotely, and setup your router to talk encrypted VPN to the remote site. Then your end-provider will have no idea what you are doing over this encrypted tunnel. This could also be done with a poor-mans SSH tunnel to a remote host, as well.
Anyone have any docs on how this can be done?
There will be a cottage industry of remote IP providers springing up providing native IPv4 access, me thinks, much in the same way you have NNTP Usenet providers, as well. Possibly in countries with ‘less’ regulations over IP content.
– chex
Piracy or no piracy, if my ISP kills torrent it’s bad news anyway. Take something like OpenOffice. I don’t want to wait 4 weeks to download it because my ISP is an idiot. Encryption is heavy on the computer and will cause problems when different clients communicate, but until the ISP understands that BitTorrent is a serious protocol, just like HTTP and FTP, encryption is the best solution to the problem.
So long live uTorrent and Azureus :D
I am using Rogers as my ISP and noticed my bittorrent downloads struggling to get above 10kB. I changed to BitComet, set up some router port forwarding and followed the advice I read on a number of forums (especially the BitComet forums) and was downloading at 375kB this weekend. Sweet! How long it lasts, I don’t know…but for the moment, I’m loving it.
@ Izomiac
“It’s actually a really progressive client, I’m not sure why so many people hate it for the reason of the month.”
Anyone who hates it this month is late. Comet’s problems wth allowing DHT on any torrent was a good enough reason to dislike it imo. They did fix that problem, so no reason to hate a good program, which I agree is progressive.
“I’d give it 5:1 odds that uTorrent and Azureus implement their own version of packet encryption so it isn’t compatible with the existing BitComet standard, and BitComet will eventually have to change their implementation (just like with tracker-less downloading).”
I’ll agree with you on the first comment. The major BT clients can’t really ever get their act together in terms of protocol advancement. The comment on trackerless DHT doesn’t make sense. I thought uTorrent and BC accessed the same DHT layer, and Azureus used their own. Fill me in
The Spanish ISP Ono is aplying traffic shaping right now, with 1024/512 my maximum download rate is 30kb/s. This is a great notice to all spanish people
Ono esta capando el p2p, con 1024/512 de Ono no pasamos de 30kb/s. Esta noticia es cojonuda
The VPN/SSH comments are dead on. Encrypting BT won’t help much when an ISP does like RCN, and simply packet spoofs EOFs into your stream, actively disrupting BT peer protocols and preventing all seeding/uploading after 100% is reached.
Rather than implement encryption on a per-application basis, simply attach a BitTorrent client to an encrypted channel and route it through a packet anonymising service using an SSH tunnel. Or just VPN the entire connection. There really is no need to build in encryption into the client, which from a layer point of view is a bad idea anyway. Two such services that offer application or connection anonymity are:
http://www.findnot.com/setupsupp.html
http://www.your-freedom.net/6/
If more ISPs go lame like RCN then services like these will only grow in popularity and become more prevalent. We might even see entire voluntary darknets growing in popularity:
http://tor.eff.org/
http://www.i2p.net/faq
There’s already a quite substantial plugin for Azureas that already implements an encrypted darknet:
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/doc/AnonBT/i2p/I2P_howto.htm
Rogers is quite likely the most incompetent large ISP in North America. I can say this after having read numerous tales of woe from others about their ISPs. Rogers subscribers (and I am one) could only wish to have our service work as well as those complainers get (they do not know how lucky they are).
Rogers ran their own ISP operation with their own staff. How incompetent were they? They joined the @Home “group” and waited until the last few weeks that @Home was operating before providing any sort of migration path. The migration was so incompetent (I had to try it to see just how bad it was) that my call to their help desk about migrating two usernames (yes, I had one and my wife had her own — and clearly no one at Rogers expected anything so complicated) to Rogers recommended email program (Outlook Express – duh!) got the response: that can’t be done; you can have only one email address, you have to create another account on the computer to access a second Outlook Express email account.
Ok, so by now you know that they are useless. How useless?
There are far too many stories for me to accept anything other than this: Rogers (when they ran their own email operations) were hacked.
Twice.
My spam messages had been 1-2 a week ever since I joined until one day (and every day since then) it jumped to 20/30 per day. Only on my Rogers email account. I have another (non-Rogers) account for ‘dubious’ sites and it doesn’t see anything like that amount of spam.
Now they let Yahoo handle their email and the spam is identified (with only one or two false positives). In order to maintain my email accounts, I have to go to a Rogers/Yahoo “smail support” page. For a long time, I had to use IE because their pages wouldn’t support Opera/Moz/FF. I can get there now using Opera.
But suppose I have a question that needs the help desk support. I have to go through … well, try it for yourself: 1-888-288-4663 … interactive voice response. When prompted for your phone number simply say “general information” — for fun, try saying it before the voice completes his remarks.
Their incompetence knows no bounds: for six months I was getting telemarketer calls to enroll in Rogers High Speed. They are so incompetent that they couldn’t even do a quick “pass” of subscribers phone numbers against the lists they were purchasing. I started telling them I was already subscribed and wanted the account cancelled immediately.
I do have one good thing to say about Rogers: they have an excellent help desk. Of course, if you have to field as many calls as they do, eventually even the dumbest person on the help desk achieves a level of competence, I suppose.
I’ve just got too much on my plate right now so I can’t afford to take the time to move off Rogers onto Bell. But there may be a relocation move in my future. I’ll say “bye-bye” to the house, “bye-bye” to the neighbours, and “good f*cking riddance” to Rogers.
I never really get anything using Bittorrent but recently needed to download 2 DVDs worth of Debian Sarge. Bittorrent saved me a bunch of time and the mirror servers a lot of bandwidth. It would indeed suck to have my BT throttled for those times when I actually need to use it, so maybe it’s not a bad idea to have the headers encrypted. As long as there’s backwards compatibility, I see no reason not to.
I don’t understand why you guys are ignoring one of Brams principal objections – namely that it won’t work, as ISPs will still be able to packet shape traffic with more advanced shaping rules, and if one day it gets to the point where they can’t do that they’ll just enforce draconian rules on EVERYBODY. You guys are the few who are ruining it for the many, please stop!
@MH
Kind of a cliche, but guns are still available aren’t they?
ISP’s don’t have the right to block traffic just because it’s an effective way of distributing files.
ERNESTO-
ISP’s can block anything they want, because they own the network. Your option is to find a different provider.
“I don’t understand why you guys are ignoring one of Brams principal objections – namely that it won’t work”
We should believe him just because he says so? Rubbish.
I think it’s a great way to go into, this will give ISP less power and more to consummer.
Still you can seed before you finish the 100% and stop at 99.99% … (If they try to prevent seeding after 100%)
But still there are so many ISP that are not doing it and that you can switch to…
This is a telecom arms race; escalation is inevitable between ISPs and p2p devs.
Eventually the ISP will simply throttle traffic to $SLOW kbps after a customer transfers >$QUOTA per day (regardless of traffic type).
That’s really what ISPs want, and the technology to do it already exists.
Now’s a good time to IM a friend and begin building a wifi darknet.
-GC
Internet provision shouldn’t really be an “arms race”, but I agree that what’s on the short-term horizon is something like that. I hope ISPs consider something more innovative to avoid this becoming a necessity.
If what they’re worried about is the bandwidth taken up by BitTorrent and other p2p protocols, this isn’t going to help. The hi-tech innovators screwing around at home for fun will always beat the big guys. It’s just too decentralized for a few giant organizations to anticipate their every move.
If certain ISP’s are really so concerned about the bandwidth usage, why don’t they just charge by the Gig, or something like that? If someone were to offer $5-10 flat per month just for the hookup (higher price for faster connection speed), and say, 50-75 cents per Gig (lower price the more you download… i.e. bulk rates) on top of that, they’d have my business, as I’d pay more when I used more, and less when I used less. It seems pretty intuitive to me.
They wouldn’t have to put tons of effort into checking headers and whatnot, as it would apply to *all* traffic. I’d pay the same price per gig whether I was in a torrent swarm, or downloading movie trailers/news footage via HTTP.
Perhaps during holidays, the rate could be bumped up a little bit so that people would be less inclined to to their heavy traffic on those days. Every Christmas, it’s the same damn thing: internet’s slow. I’m the only one in the family who understands why: The ISP can handle the flow of leechers on a regular day, but when you heap on the gigs upon gigs of personal video and family pictures sent around on holidays, it just pushes the ISP to its breaking point, and it just can’t handle all the requests for info.
Although there is clearly a market for the flat-rate unlimited traffic solutions currently popular, and such plans will likely be around forever, pricing traffic by the byte for those people who want that kind of plan will solve a ton of problems while giving people more fluid pricing.
It won’t require throttling, quotas, and packet-blocking, because before any big download, customers will have to ask themselves: “Hey, I’ve already spent 40 bucks on data this month, do I really want to spend another two bucks for this movie?” They likely will since the marginal cost is so low, but the ISP benefits as well from the extra revenue. That extra revenue will encourage them to keep the pipes wide open for as much data as possible so that they can milk every last cent out of their customers, while customers will benefit from fewer slowdowns. I bet anything that services with this kind of pricing plan will eventually grow to be the highest-quality, most respected providers of internet bandwidth.
It’s just a win-win situation that way.
Okay, I’m done.
Don’t forget that some of us shape for a reason. I work for the resnet at a public US university. We have a 30mbit connection for our on-campus students. We have a reasonable AUP which doesn’t really care about much other than legality.
We also have 3200 on-campus residents, many of whom use bittorrent. Because the bandwidth is paid for by students, we fill the pipe to full capacity 24/7. Bittorrent and other P2P programs have the lowest priority, but we let them fill the pipe.
If encrypted torrents become commonplace, it could seriously degrade service to other students. Its not unreasonable to imagine that if our packet shaping devices become ineffective far more restrictive policies will follow. Who wins then?
Much of the marketeering going on from ISPs revolves around connection speed, especially in terms of broadband versus dial-up. One of the ways the providers get subscribers is by specifically touting the speed of their service over say dial-up, and talking all about the ability to download content at high speeds. Between Broadband competitors, the advertising usually focuses on better speed/price ratios, or service.
The ads tout content content content, download, download, download…
It’s pretty crappy to then sign on and realize you can’t – cause well, you are downloading -too- much. I simply don’t think packet-shaping is ‘fair’ when you are already ponying up money up front for ‘broadband’ which was marketed to you specifically as a tool to obtain content, then you are restricted on the amount of content you can get.
Marketing an ‘unlimited’ service should simply be that – unlimited – and let people pay what they will… I’d happily pay ‘overuse’ charges if it would give me more bandwidth.
One could argue ‘if yer willing to pay more, upgrade your service.’ Well, my particular annoyance at my ISP is that my pipe is supposed to be 1.5mbps and my speeds in terms of d/l tend to be slower than friends on slower rated connections just down the street. I want the bandwidth I’m paying for, and I damn well wouldn’t be happy if I not only got screwed outta bandwidth on the one end, but got charged or penalized for too much downloading on the other with a pipe that’s already slower than it should be.
On top of that, if I ‘overuse’ my connection by say downloading movies at google video and then get my ability to DL WoW content over say BT neutered, what was the point in subscribing to broadband?
I believe eventually ISPs will develop the bandwidth to accomodate heavy widespread use of bittorrent simply because of stuff like IPTV and HDTV (think FIOS), and the fact that each newer generation of users will grow up more technoligcally inclined and therefore more likely to be a heavy downloader, and this whole problem of bittorrent might simply go away on its own as the net continues to mature. But that’s a ways away and does nothing to help the short term users of packet shaping ISPs. If encrypting BT helps out short-term I’m all for it.
Here’s the 8.75 million reason why Bram Cohen has commercial
http://thomashawk.com/2005/11/bram-cohen-and-his-deal-with-devil.html
oh get over it, encryption barely uses any cpu time just to decrypt a header for every packet.
Here’s the reality of running an ISP, regardless of size:
you pay based on the 95th percentile of bits/s to peer with other providers, except when you have reciprocal agreements. So more traffic equals more costs. That can be profit when you are selling Internet as an upstream peer to a smaller ISP – but eventually you have to pay to peer with the rest of the internet yourself.
Higher bit rate requires more expensive equipment. With the traffic rates going no these days, that equipment is fantastically expensive, make no mistake.
Now I actually get a consistent 4 mbit/s on my home cable connection, for $40 a month. I also know that if I sustain that rate for a period of time, it becomes a losing proposition for my ISP.
If all my ISP’s customers started doing this, the economics stop working out. Somewhere there’s a curve where profit and cost make sense to run a business. Beyond that you might as well close your doors.
As a rampaging torrent user myself, I fully enjoy my current ratio of bit rate to dollar, but since I run ISP networks and understand the dynamics involved, I have no illusions of the sustainability or scalability of my own traffic patterns across the entire customer base.
Correction… sorry my poor English:
If ISPs were selling the bandwidth they can give, they wouldn’t be blocking any traffic because they could fill all the pipes of all the users. The problem is that they have X bandwith, and sell X*(Bigger Than One), so you only get full speed if lots of people are using little bandwith.
I am a shaw subscriber and I was using Shareaza until a few weeks ago when I noticed that my download rate was dropping. I switched to utorrent and my KB/second has increased dramatically.
I do not have a problem with thottling, but I do have a problem with any cable subscriber not notifying me of a change in services.
You also have to view the Internet as whole. The more people have high speed up- and download, the more traffic the Internet as whole produces. So earlier or later people will start blocking each other.
I agree with some comments. On the other side I don´t understand why people argument and defend points of view of companies and customers. This is VERY SIMPLE:
If an ISP markets its broadband as, say “512kbps” then IT SHOULD BE ABLE TO PEAK AT 512Kbps most of the time, unless there are bottlenecks outside the edge of the ISP, wich of course noone can control and we live with day after day.
If they want to market it and sell it with restrictions they IT SHOULD READ: “up to 512kbps”. PERIOD. Guys that´s IT. There´s not even point of views.
I say this with knowledge of cause. I work on a major Cel company on the data area. I have a major degree in IT and Telecomm engineering and I also have a master degree in MKTG. I don´t say this to bitch anyone around (hell I dont even like what I studied)… its just to ensure credibility.
The ISPs should stop ripping us off… if we are the informed ones and know how to take FULL ADVANTAGE OF WHAT WE BOUGHT the so BE IT… and they should provide the service and not limit it unless stated in contract.
Be well.
Rogers is still killing my torrent usage. I get 40-80 kB/s upload for a while, until randonly it drops to nothing.
i am at 40-80 kB/s for probably 10 minutes.
Rogers sucks. It is throttling all torrent traffic. With new beta uTorrent i can get only 15-20 kB. I hope new protocol will improve to work around throttling porblem.
mine is totally crap. i am getting 0 kb.sec now for upload. rogers is killing my torrents.
Im one of users affected by the bandwith shaping[cogeco canada]… for 2 weeks I had no transfer going ( upload mostly ), yesterday I installed Utorrent beta, enabled Encryption and boooooom everything is back to Normal….
so yes it works great, Im so happy.
thank you to whoever made this solution, it works great :D
oh ya it s great i do have limitation in fact from my isp in romania it s probably the best ideea to get rid of junks traffic .i want torrents i want fast..i can download only with a 7 kB/s speed ..i hate this …long live the torrents
i hate those isp shit…i want some speed …we do not pay for limitation…we pay for speed…..can someone help me…??? i do not know how to get rid of their shit …i have scanned the ports ..i have done..many things…what can i do for some speed?? …i use u torrent probably the best torrent client if you had any idea i might use
HEELP
I dunno where you people live that this shaping is taking place, I have yet to hear anything about it in the lower, southern part of the country, namely Verizon country. But to emphasize what was already stated, I pay for my damn bandwidth, I plan on using it. I don’t pay $50/month or so just to read my damn e-mail. If they want to limit the bandwidth they better price it accordingly (á la AOL dialup, etc. pricing by hours). This is just BS… I already try and use the latest version of all my software, so as long as the BT clients are a week ahead of the game I’ll keep downloading the updates.
I really doubt that they could ever just cut off high port traffic altogether, that’s just silly.
There’s always another way.
My ISP is fine with the use of bittorrent. I’ve been using it for 3+ years and i get speeds of 250kbps.
For those on Rogers, what good is this going to do you? You’ll still be held to your bandwidth cap.
Do the smart thing, get out of your contract. Rogers already broke their end of it when they introduced this packet shaping and download cap bull****.
Get Sypmatico, MNSi or Execulink.
I haven’t yet seen this Encryption in action but have read and researched enough to know it works and why wouldn’t it?
Now, slightly off topic, but I gotta say this,
I think the biggest threat to the torrent community today is the MPAA, I don’t get movies because, lets face it, the one I’ve seen are shit quality, the RIAA is full of shit. The MPAA is actively closing down communitys, not chasing individuals, this is about the only way to kill off the bittorent community and I wouldn’t be surprised if they managed to take out all the big name sites (TS, TPB, MN etc etc).
This said, the one place untouchable is the untalked about IRC (I dare to speak about it openly, everyone else keeps tight-lipped on this matter). The IRC network is so huge there is no chance in hell that anyone would ever take it down. Sure, you could hit a few servers, few hundred maybe, but the sad fact for the law (the great fact for us) is that more would rise to take their place.
Anyone who opposes the piracy community is not insane, just niave, and more so if that actualy think Piracy will ever be stopped. Traffacing can be stopped, smuggling can be stopped, the act of piracy cannot.
Enough people still buy DVD’s, games and music, why do they bitch. The way I work is this, download it, listen to it, like it [buy] it, else, delete it. They’re not losing money then. This said, if I couldn’t download the music I wouldn’t even been listening to it at all, I wouldn’t go out and buy a CD in the chance that I may hate every sound that comes from it. The same goes with games and demos.
The bittorrent world doesn’t just give us Piracy, it gives us community and a lot of great legitimet, legal software, music and films. I Bittorrent is lost, it will be a sad day for communications as a whole.
UK isps are now starting to throttle bt traffic during peak hours – still alowwing it but capping it to about 30% of the potential and the definition of peak hours is 1800-0000 weekdays and 0900 to 0000 weekends. This seems a middle ground at the moment, but rest assured i will be encrypting all my traffic to get around it because if i pay for a 2 meg connection i dam sure want one.
http://www.sandvine.com/solutions/p2p_policy_mngmt.asp
http://www.sandvine.com/solutions/snapshot_p2p.asp
Traffic shaping is useless- solutions like sandvine allow on-net traffic without limiting traffic.. but only offnet request for seeding is actually denied or limited on protocol request.. thus leechin is fine, and anyone that shares offnet will be limited. Bandwidth monitering and magnagement is needed if the US wants a more stable broadband system.. its already infant compared to countries abroad..
The thing is, as I see it, that throttling bandwith won’t actually help. I live in the UK, and to my knowledge, there are only two ISPs that offer unlimited broadband – AOL and Telewest. As noone will use AOL for BT uses, Telewest’s biggest selling point is that their service is unlimited and (for me at least) unthrottled. If all the other ISPs start throttling, one will come along and say ‘hey, we dont do that’ and will generate a ton of extra business because of it. So I doubt many ISPs will start simply because of the number of customers it will put off.
Dont know if Rogers uses the same port, but when Cogeco started showing signs of throttling, I read somewhere that port 1720(VoIP)was not affected and it seems to be working, so far.
Re: “sustainability or scalability of traffic patterns”
and
“The problem is that they have X bandwith, and sell X*(Bigger Than One), so you only get full speed if lots of people are using little bandwith”
Hello. Do you think we should have hospital beds and doctors available to treat every person should they fall ill at the same time? Obviously you have never thought about how a viable business operates.
Do you think your current standard of living (I imagine it is up there given that everyone here fusses over bittorrent) should be available to every person on the planet. Grow up. Your standard of living is only possible because it is not shared by everyone.
There is availability of large bandwdith to power users precisely because of the large number of mom and pop users who pay the same price but use essentially nothing. When done properly, the ISPs collect money from both and are happy to do so.
I own a small ISP and want to know from you file swappers why you think you have the right to use so much bandwidth. you are paying for access not a certain amount of bandwidth. If I want a t1 line I have to pay something like 600 a month for guaranteed 1.5 meg. you all think your crummy $40 per month buys you all the bandwidth you can hog? Sorry it don’t work that way. Buy a corvette and put the hammer down and see how long before the cops confiscate it from you. If you drive it normally and then go out on the back roads a have a little time with the hammer down well so what. Big pipe broadband works the same. Use it normal and no problem. Let 50 people log on to your hard drive and suck 3 to 5 megs for hours or days and I will shut you down right now cause you are costing me money. Sorry but you just don’t have any right to pay me $40 a month and use $400 worth of bandwidth. What the f-k would you do? Sure you would just let everyone have a bandwidth free for all and put you outa biz? ya right. Bandwidth cost money. No freekin way around it. Out of $40 I charge I make $4 per customer after all expense. Figure it out fools. ISP’s will get better and better at throttling your bandwidth. enjoy your little party while you can your days are numbered. I just watch my incoming and outgoing bandwidth. It both spikes up and down. I pay no attention to incoming. I watch the outgoing like a hawk. I see it spike up and stay there for 5 minutes I login and trace the IP to find out who it is. Then I sit back and watch it for maybe 20 to 30 minutes. It if keeps up I block that IP both incoming and outgoing for the next 24 hrs. I have a strict no servers policy. Run a server and start hogging bandwidth and you are offline for the next 24 hrs no exceptions period.
Bram Cohen is now irrelevant – he is nothing more than a copyright cartel stooge. If his client had a tenth of the usage of BitComet or Azureus he’d be celebrating.
To Mr. ISP BOB
MAn your such a d$#m crybaby…”Lowballers” like you are a freakin’ cancer…Just increase capacity and stop crying about it…I’m in restaurants and when it gets crowded for an extended period, WE MAKE MORE CAPACITY…thus we get more people in the seats…Revenue goes up…I tell you what, if you cut me off I’d tell you to take a long walk off a short plank buddy…My 40 bones can be spent somewhere else…
Hey Bob.No 1 cares what u run honey
Poor poor Bob,
You are in the wrong place if you want people to feel sorry for you. Maybe you should go work for M$ with you insightful market plan of punishing your customers ;-)
To ISP_BOB,
Yes, I’m also a major network admin, but we have VERY differing views on “bandwidth” usage. You say that a T1 costs you $ 600.00 per month – I agree, that for some “unknown” reason ( probally corporate greed ) leasing bandwidth is ridicously priced – I lease a 10 meg connection from the state for $ 36,000 per year !!!! But to say that $ 40.00 per month only buys someone “access” to your network and not the full bandwidth – come on, your fooling yourself. If your bandwidth is that strapped, you’d better get more customers and more T1’s or a T3. Even if your a small ISP charging $ 40.00 per person, you only need to get about 15 people signed-up to make that payment !!!! That ain’t a lot. And remember, not all of those 15 people will be using the full bandwidth at any one time !!!! So who cares if someone bursts the bandwidth for a couple of hours; as long as you have enough BW for the other customers traffic and no-ones complaining; that’s really all that matters isn’t it ??? If you keep shutting people off for 24 hours, what makes you think you’ll even have an ISP for long ???? I’d be REALLY PISSED if I was paying $ 40.00 per month, throttled down to nothing, and shut off completely for 24 hours !!! If you really want to do something, at least TELL these people when they sign-up that they’re guaranteed a certain BW limit and if they exceed it, only then will they be throttled-back to the set maxium. I’d have to say I agree fully with Message #71 from DINOBOT. I’m also glad to FINALLY see someone using Diffie-Hellman ( PGP ) keys to encrypt bittorrent !!!! It’s about time !!!! Keep those nosy record exec’s and movie companies from suing 12 year olds – those bastards !!! Hack the Planet !!!
I can definatly confirm it works. I’m on Shaw Cable and they cap my torrent traffic. I just downloaded the new version of Azureus tonight and enabled the encryption options and it has completely fixed my problem. I’m back to being able to seed torrents at the full upload rate of my cable modem.
Hi all.
I have just downloaded torrent 1.5 and it doesn’t seem to be working for me (I think I might have it set up wrong) im on plusnet uk and I got a 2mb ADSL connection so could anyone tell me what I need ticked in preferences.
Hi, please post your speed related problems here..
http://www.btlist.com/categories.php
thanks
Hey ISP_Bob
— QUIT BITCHING AND GO WORK FOR ROGERS ALREADY!! I’m really not surprized that you own a “Small” ISP …. I`d say with the way you F**K your customers over — it`s gonna get even smaller.
That “corvette“ comparison is the lamest excuse i have ever heard. by that comparison you`d have cops pulling people over for doing 20 kph on a highway! Cause god knows, no one ever reaches the `Advertised speed limit` on broadband….
And BTW… Did you ever for one second think of ADVERTIZING your bandwidth restrictions and policies??? — What`s that? NO??? Oh yeah that`s because if you actually went out and told people what they`d be getting…. NO ONE WOULD SIGN UP!
Quote. By Torrentfreak » Australian ISP’s wont throttle Bittorrent traffic on 02.20.06 5:50 pm
[…] Good news for the Australian Bittorrent fans. Three of Australia’s largest internet providers say they are not limiting Bittorrent traffic on their networks (like others do) and have no immediate plans to impose restrictions on the Bittorrent and other p2p traffic. […]
I am on 2 way satellite with Australia’s second biggest ISP, and they block p-p! They openly state in their AUP that p-p is not allowed, and they blocked it, until I discovered BitComet. BitComet works if there is adequate seeders
I’m a network engineer for an ISP. We currently restrict P2P applications to 512kbps for all users. And for good reason. P2P applications can cripple a network, they’re like leaches. They consume all available bandwidth for endless periods of time. What I think will eventually happen is users will start having to pay for transfer. No more unlimited connections, You’ll get a set data transfer limit for the month and if you go over your limits you pay more per byte. They already do such things in Canadian and other oversee’s markets.
Just because you pay 49.99 for a 1.5-3.0mbps connection doesn’t mean your entitled to use whatever protocols you wish on your ISP’s network without them provisioning it to make the network experience good for all users involved. If you want truely unrestricted internet, for the bandwidth advertised, you need to buy a leased line from an ILEC/CLEC. I guarentee the ISP’s will figure out a way to limit P2P use and since they own the network, it is up to them to decide what traffic gets priority for their customers. When one protocol consumes 75% of your bandwidth for hours on end, it inhibits all other protocols running on your network..
klaatu, you don’t seem to understand business very well. There is a lot more overhead to running an ISP than buying and reselling bandwidth. It’s not just simply recouping your bandwidth costs each month, hell I get each 1mb for a little under 200$/month on a fiber MPLS network 1 hop from level3. If I made profits off of everything after that I’d be bloody effin rich. You also have equipment, employees, leases, etc to pay for.
Throwing more bandwidth at P2P is like feeding a seagul a peice of bread. Once you feed one all their buddies come a long and eat your whole loaf of bread. The more bandwidth available, the more that is consumed by P2P. Unless you shape the bandwidth accordingly. Every ISP does this, or should I say successful ISP. It’s just a matter of to what extent they take it.
You have to remember there are two sides to everything. The ISP’s aren’t out to make your life miserable, they’re just looking out for the performance of their networks.
Anyway that’s my 2 cents.
Read this
Ernesto,
Yeah and if your Ma Bell or another major ILEC, you have OCxxx lines that support tons of throughput. When your a smaller ISP with a 10mbps backhaul, it can easily be overcome by such protocols. Your post just shows your ignorance to the issue.
As is usual with life, everyone sees things from there own perspective. That’s not a slam against anyone, or anyone’s point of view – it’s just a fact.
I’m an ISP as well, and the fact is, P2P is (from my point of view) a plague – a cancer, that will consume all the bandwidth that I can provide. It’s an insatiable appetite.
The Corvette example was maybe off base, the way we explain it to our customers is like an ‘$5.99 all you can eat buffet’. If you pay your $6, and eat a reasonable amount, no problem. That’s what it’s for. Some customer’s have big appetites, and some have small appetites, and in the end, it’s all supposed to average out. No problem. :)
Where this falls apart with internet usage is that 10% of your users belly up to the salad bar, pay their $6 and then eat 1000 lbs of food. It’s not that the restaurant is mean or evil or stupid, but that’s just not a sustainable business model. If you were the business owner, you’d have an ‘acceptable use policy’ for your All-you-can-eat-buffet, and that’s really no different that what the ISP’s are trying to do.
Where I’m located, T1’s are $1760 per month. We certainly have users who simply can’t understand / believe / fathom that we need to limit their bandwidth in any way, shape or form. However, MOST users also want our network to be fast and responsive, and frankly, if I allow that 10% of users to use up 90% of my network resources – then I’m not doing my job for the other 90% of paying customers that want good, reliable service.
Certainly, if it was just a matter of wiggling my nose and magically adding more bandwidth from upstream, all ISP’s would do it. The fact it, for me to add another T1 is a major expense, and as long as there is the perception that little Johnny should be able to pay his $35 and download at 2Mbs 24 x 7 – that’s a problematic business plan. I understand we’ve all been trained to think that we should get everything for free – but as long as business’s have to pay for their bandwidth costs (or their food costs), they are going to be watching their customers for over-use.
For what it’s worth, we’re clear with our customers on signup – no Server Privileges. We certainly loose some customers, but the ones we have (mostly) understand that we have a finite amount of resources and that we’re wanting to make the whole network as fast and good as we can for all users.
Traffic shaping is not good. If you pay for an internet connection, that’s what you should get from your ISP — an internet connection. Not a connection that will let you browse the web and check email, but little else. If an ISP has issues with the amount of data a customer is transferring, then the ISP needs to address that issue with that customer, and not restrict every user in one class of traffic.
It’s akin to the phone company trying to prioritize phone traffic , e.g., telling you that you can’t call and chat with your friend down the street because Joe Blow has a “better” use for those network resources (say, calling to order something from the phone company).
The ISPs need to keep their hands off content for more than just this reason. If the ISPs can and will throttle bandwidth based on protocol, how can they disclaim any liability for the content travelling through their pipes? If you open the pipe to see what is going through you take on a responsibility for that traffic – and ISPs may start to find themselves being held responsible for their customers conduct.
C-Man:
Identifing traffic based on ports and packet headers and then applying policy’s to those connections is hardly opening up each packet and examining the payload. And there is no way you could prove that in the courts if it had ever come to that. You’d be backed by the manufacturers that make such network applications to manage bandwidth (believe it or not it’s a pretty big market). Cisco, Allot, Nortel, etc all have means of identifing traffic and priortizing it. It’s called QoS (Quality of Service)! The ISP owns the network and they decide what travels on that network and at what speed..
It’s like me telling you that you can’t build a pool in your back yard. I don’t have a stake in your property or a lean, therefore I have no right to say what you can or can not build on what is yours. The same principal applies when you own a network. You have to make descions on what is legitimate traffic and what is not. Legitimate traffic will always get priority, (VoIP, HTTP, IPSEC/VPN, and other real time protocols). SMTP, POP3, P2P, they all get the lowest priority on my network, because they are non-timesensitive, or are considered illegitament traffic.
Here’s a prime example, a satellite internet provider has very limited upstreme bandwidth available to them. This is a limitation of the technology, no fault of the ISP. If they were to let their users connect to the internet unprovisioned, then all users internet connections would suffer. They would be unable to send DNS requests, a very legitment type of traffic, to resolve domain names. Thus giving that user a Page Cannot be Displayed error. All because one user was saturating the upstreme with P2P or some other bandwidth hungry application.
When you purchase a connection from an ISP, read the disclaimer. No where in there does it say you are guarenteed bandwidth. Unless of course you have a leased line, which even then probably has some legal out for the ISP in case of some network failure, act of God, what have you.
The ISP is nothing more than a bandwidth reseller, that also provides additional services such as email, content filtering, webspace, etc. To maximize profits, they sell as many users as they can on a certain connection. Once that connection is saturated, and by saturated I mean bandwidth utilization is sustained in the 95th percentile for days on end, then they purchase more bandwidth.
If we were to guarentee say 1.5mbps to each and every user, then we’d have to purchase a T1 for EVERY user we had. T1’s run from 300-2000$/month depending on the market and location. Those expenses would then be passed on to you, the consumer.. So would you rather pay 39.99/month or 300/month for that beloved internet connection?
Well… I like utorrent just because its nicer, doesn’t feel as laggy. I do have 1gb ram but.. bittorrent slowed my ass down. After learning that Rogers was dicking around I switched it up. I never used torrents because i once waited a week to download something menial 700mb. Like avg. 5-15k/sec. I just downloaded at 120k/sec and that sped up immediately after i started up the encryption up again. It’s like instant gratification.
Utorrent is the best .. my isp pipex where throttling my ports my best speed on 2mb was 10k for downloads on bit tornado and bitcomet .. i decided to try utorrent with the encryption now im back to getting 200k.. ahh the relief.
This is a netwide plot to destor all p2p traffic. PIPEX a major UK iSP just capped all P2p (inc bittorrent) to 20Kbps on all accounts 24/7. If you know of any other ISP involved in traffic shaping let me know at pipexsucks.blogspot.com
its happening to me here in Victoria too…..i noticed winmx has slowed down alot…..i’m with SHAW and do believe they are ripping off there customers.
I’m with Rogers and in downtown toronto. I have yet to find a torrent client to get around the problem. I tried bittorrent and BitComet with encryption and it didn’t do jack… I heard that France resently legalized p2p though…
Jig, take a look at this post
http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-encrypt-bittorrent-traffic/
Works for now…
hey guys im new to this whole torrent thing and it seems that rogers has all the port codes to down load stuff if any one has a bell code that i can use on utorrent.com that would be greatfull other wise like every one else im am gonna switch over to bell take care all….
Uhm, why the fuck isn’t the encryption doing ANYTHING for me anymore?
Did rogers find some way to fuck us again?
I hate rogers and I’d switch ISP’s but I have a feeling I’ll just get throttled by any ISP anymore.
Encryption in the protocol does make sense though, it’s not as “pretty” as tunnel it trough VPN or SSH, but it’s more user friendly. You only need to start the torrent client. that’s all.
For me I would rather tunnel torrent trough a higher layer encryption protocol. Maybe ppl wil provide this.
Ow…for ppl complaining that torrent make their system slow, RAM has nothing to do with it. It’s your CPU. Torrent client with a dozen of active torrents generates so many small packets it’s insane. no too long ago every network packet caused an interrupt. Now with NAPI (is ring buffer method for packets in DMA) that is reduced SOME but BT is still just complete overkill anyway.
normally network applications try and approach a multitude of the current MTU ethernet frame. usually 1500 or so.
This is why -for example- FTP works nice. it doesn’t need to fragment like crazy. At that rate, FTP protocol works very well with NAPI and causes almost no CPU load and is efficient.
BT isn’t in this respect. not at all.
I have had the feeling that more and more ISPs are choking torrent traffic. way to go, this will help people who widely use torrents
i recently migrated from tiscali to pipex without realising that pipex throttle torrent speeds! couldn’t reach above 30(max) KB/s.
However,i sent pipex a not so nice email asking for my MAC code(only a day after joining them) and i also started using utorrent(with encryption enabled) and now my download speeds are maxing out at 240 KB/s..Not sure wether it was the email or utorrent that worked but hey-who cares! :)
@ C-Man
Fine point regards DNS lookup. This contention happens frequently on my ISP, a UK company that was early (for this market) to rolling out 8Mbps and even 16Mbps service. DNS frequently crawls, stalls, hiccups, basically times out often mid – session in an important transaction.
Dare i say it, the backhaul is run by Cable and Wireless. I didn’t realise this, but i have direct experience of C&W NOC staff, and they’re short a clue or two.
Explaining “network conditions” to home users is far from funny. I can deal with it because i can cache DNS at my router, which makes life a little easier. Yeah, typical Joe Six-Pack trick that :-)
Whilst i heartily dislike the advertising standards – or lack of them – in the ISP game, traffic shaping could be more aggressive for the BENEFIT OF USERS.
The ISP i mention a week ago sent me a ‘mail saying “no more residential customers”, then apparently retracted that letter. I think i can guess the troubles that lead to their wavering. Business customers have real incentive to fix their traffic at source. I think however my ISP was being rather hopeful.
In an ideal world, i’d shape at my border, and the uplink would be wide open. But then everyone had better be doing the same . .
The ISP owner above who MANUALLY shapes his traffic i think is totally nuts. Intervening personally is guaranteed to create unpleasant issues with customers. Quite apart from the waste of his/her valuable time, the personal intervention will always come across badly. Furthermore, the case cited above does not take account of users need to grab increasingly large patches or other files which are nothing to do with leeching, filesharing, bittorrent or commons abuse. Just think of dealing with Windows Update on a older RTM install – that’s one heck of a lot of patches to get that box configured, and that’s a very common situation for home users i meet.
just some idle observations . .
To the ISP cry-babys:
What you are doing has got nothing to do with “buying a Corvette and getting stopped for speeding”
What you are doing is more like an Airline selling more tickets than there are seats on the plane.This is shifting the burden to the customer. Its NOT the customers problem that you want to sell something (bandwith) that you dont actualy have. I have a contract with my ISP (like do most of us).In this contract it is agreed that my ISP sells me 6/6 Mbit UNLIMITED bandwith and that I pay a fee for this. Thats contract-law 101.If you have say 100 customers with a CONTRACT like that its YOUR job to make shure you can fullfill the agreed terms.
If you dont HAVE 600Mbit then DONT SELL IT!!
I wonder if the busts against BitTorrent
has anything to do with encryption?
can you imagine the growth in encrypted traffic since this started? Im shure the NSA is working more than overtime decrypting all that “terrorist” traffic!!
I am using azureus and noticed that when i download my connection speed for surfing drops from around 8-9mb to 300kb ! I am on the Telewest network and when turning on the plain encrip everything returned to normal, it very annoying that isp’s do this if I pay for 10mb then i should be able to run what ever i like across the link providing its legal!!
for 4 months our isp has been throttling bt traffic and i moved to usenet
this afternoon i was bored and went through google and encrypting bt traffic and found a few sites – it took me 2 minutes to enable the necessary options in utorrent and am currently now using bt again
(i have admin access to our network and know that we are actively traffic shaping)
my dilemma now is whether i say anything ;) or if there is anything we can do
Traffic shaping sucks… Rogers up here in Canada has started with some new high tech shaping junk. But protocol encryption does work. The fact that Bram reacted negatively suprises me as more and more isps begin to throttle etc..
i am in a college that blocks/monitors for bitorrent traffic what are the best settings for me in utorrent? please someone email me at benknefelkamp@gmail.com
i think the biggest problem with piracy today is people (mostly kids, no offence) think they have some right to actually do it. they think that if its free its for me.. they dont understand how this all started. think about where the stuff comes from. the source of a pirated release has to do something illegal in order to obtain a release. sadly the motivation for this is mostly money. the fact that it trickles down to the internet has nothing to do with a 16-year old kid in his parents basement downloading movies all night. the bottom line is someone has always had to pay the price for the data that is being pirated. back in the old days someone had to pay for the bbs server. now people want the ISPs to pay for it (by using their BW). If they stopped and thought about it, do you think rogers or whoever really wants to pickup the tab? You honestly cant blame the ISP for wanting to protect their investment. there will never again be a REAL decentralized form of filesharing (i think that died with BBS, who else knew what you were doing besides the server admin, the phone company? lol) now that everything goes through the internet, we are all connected, so its all centralized in one way or another. Ofcourse technology will advance and there will always be ways around it, but people who complain about having to learn about something in order to get their movies is stupid. you arent paying for the copyrighted work you are downloading, so who cares if you have to check a few boxes in your torrent program? if its that big of a deal to you, disconnect your interent and now you have a extra 40$/m to spend on dvds. I dont blame the ISPs for taking a proactive approach to stopping the abuseof their pipes, they run a buisness and want everyone to be happy, not just people who are downloading things ILLEGALLY.
Now are far as ISPs are concerned, if more ISPs start throlling or shaping or controlling BW usage in some shape or form, the regular home users arent going to notice, and these kids who leech off their parents internets are gonna have to stop pirating movies, simple as that. Eventually there will be a blacklist of ISPs who dont throttle, and who do you think the MPAA and RIAA are gonna look for first?
bittorrent is still a bottom feeder as far as pirated material goes. there will always be better, faster, more secure ways for people who work for the material they get (and derserve it, imo). I am totally against 1-click piracy is any form. I goes against everything ive learned about internet file trading. Thats why the ammount and quality of releases has gone down in the past few years, because now anyone can do it, it actually IS a problem now. If you have 5 drug-dealers in your town of 100,000 people, does your town have a drug problem? no, 90% of people prolly dont even know there are drugs in town. now invite 1000 more drug dealers into your town, do you have a drug problem now, do you think people realize it? in my understanding of the internet, piracy started for those 5 people who contributed in some way, and prolly sold what they got and made money (which i am against). now those 5 people are SOL and are less likely to contribute, hurting the now uncounted piraters as well as people who have nothing to do with piracy.
the bottom line is.. how can you complain about how difficult it is to get something you shouldent have? its not that ISPs that should addapt to yuor habits, but you that have to addapt to the habits you have already.
(i dont want any posts on how my spelling or grammar sucks :) )
[quote comment="498"]BitTorrent is far too reliant on specific ports and far too reliant on those ports being open inbound. Because of this, it is ridiculously simple to block BitTorrent traffic.quote]
Maybe, apart from the fact that bittorrent clients can change port however many times you’d like.
Hence surely you can never block bittorrent specifically without blocking pretty much everything else.
[anyone still use port 6881? Don't!]
Well, just wanted to drop a note that the packet encryption that bittorrent programs use have failed where I come from.
If it’s a war thats happening, then the ISPs have an advantage for now. Many advanced traffic shaping programs can easily throttle even encrypted torrent traffic.
I agree with derboxen that it IS our bad habits that are making us scream most in frustration – i suspect the most outspoken complainers are those who spend almost all their connected time downloading 9gig movies.
However, I have read the earlier posts and I do agree on a lot of other points as well.
1. ISPs should NOT be basing all of their marketing and advertising campaigns on their superior speeds, price/speed ratios, movie music content, etc when they can’t deliver the moment a new protocol emerges that tests their limits. Let alone those ISPs that shout “Unlimited Usage” on their banners, have pictures of corvettes/speedometers on their leaflets, or of people downloading movies on their TVads. They’re lying to their customers – flat out and simple. I know – because I feel cheated.
2. Even though at the moment p2p programs are predominantly used for piracy more than anything else, I can only imagine the horde of other legal uses it can be used for – and killing a well designed protocol is in no way helping advance the technological level of the Internet in any way. It is these things that have helped shaped the Internet into what it is today, that have actually increased the very reason why we need broadband from dialup, why the Internet is no longer just for emails and simple websites. I would love to imagine a not so distant future where everyone is interconnected 24/7 wherever they are and able to access terabytes of SHARED information at a thought. Furthermore, I would love to see the day when LEGAL movies and music are shared over protocols like torrent – with a fee of course – but no different from cable TV broadcasts. Throttling torrent traffic right now just smells of severe resistance to change by people with only short term money making goals on their mind.
3. Business model wise, it’s understandable why ISPs are forced into doing what they’re doing now. But there ARE other choices and other ways they could have done it. Who’s to say that in attempting to please the 90% of customers that do not use filesharing programs – that some of these 90% of customers WILL eventually come around to learning how to fileshare – and end up getting pissed at their service provider? Are the ISPs going to end up neglecting them as well when the time comes? Do the ISPs honestly believe that the upcoming generation of users will be content paying a monthly fee just to sit at home and check their mails? How exactly do they think their business model will survive in the next 10 years if they do this? Do they know that some forms of traffic shaping may not only impacts filesharing programs – but also some types of online gaming built around similar concepts? What if revolutionary sites like youtube’s video sharing and flickr’s photo sharing idealogy decide to jump on the filesharing bandwagon – which is a wonderful idea in my opinion – Will they get snubbed too?
I would not like to discuss what metaphor best describes this situation. The truth of the matter is, ISPs have no right to keep their users in the dark of whatever changes they are doing – especially changes that have a strong negative impact on a group of paying customers. Even more so, ISPs must have the responsibility to inform all prospective customers of the limitations in their systems (that they cant use p2p programs for example). To do so otherwise is just asking to be facing a major lawsuit eventually. And believe me, had I the money to sue, I would. I WAS cheated afterall.
[quote comment="498"]Completely worthless. I’m extremely disappointed that people who know enough to develop BitTorrent clients don’t know enough about networking to realize that this is completely pointless. Sure, encrypting the stream may get around a few packet shapers, at the moment but, unless they reconfigure BitTorrent to run everything, incoming and outgoing, over port 80 or 443 then it will be trivial to block BitTorrent.
BitTorrent is far too reliant on specific ports and far too reliant on those ports being open inbound. Because of this, it is ridiculously simple to block BitTorrent traffic. Encrypting the stream will not hide the fact that it is BitTorrent traffic. It will only prevent someone from identifying what the BitTorrent traffic is transferring. This may be a good thing for pirates but, it won’t stop the network administrator from blocking BitTorrent ports completely.
The truly successful P2P app will allow multiplexed up/downloads over SSL port 443. This will be encrypted and will appear like most other https applications. It will also traverse most any firewall and be stupidly simple for the user to operate. The down side is that it would require a centralized server to make it work so, it isn’t desireable for piracy but, I think this is also a good thing. I’m sure you’ll disagree with me on this one though because you no doubt feel that “sharing” music is your God given right and is not stealing or piracy.
Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent is doomed because it doesn’t work as well as it should (multiplexed downloads should perform far better than BitTorrent), it relies too heavily on opening obscure inbound ports, it is too hard for the average AOLer to get working, it is too easy to block.[/quote]
Sigh.. you know guys.. its not really about how easy it is to block bittorrent traffic etc..
The REAL issue here is bandwidth consumption for p2p filesharing. ISPs should realize that they are building a busines model on a rapidly advancing technology – and that they should be prepared to make hard investments on their infrastructure when it is required – rather than going the short route and giving their customers the middle finger.
It doesn’t really matter whether its torrents or some more advanced protocol that emerges later on, its just simply unethical to throttle speeds in any way.
Well, if a provider throttles P2P traffic, it means that it sells you bad service. You don’t get for you money what you want. So what you can do (besides encryption):
1. Switch to another provider which will sell good internet (without shaping). Maybe it will cost more (naturally), but you will get better service.
2. Publicize information about your provider, so all prospective customers would know which providers do throttle and which doesn’t.
@ISP_Bob
This comment was a while back, but it pissed me off, so I wanted to reply.
Bob, I have the right to use the bandwidth because that is the service as it was advertised to me. I pay $38.95 per month for 60 GB throughput, at 5Mbps down, 512kbps up. Nowhere is it stated that some protocols will get severely reduced (near zero) speeds. If my ISP cannot provide this to me, they should change their package to a profitable one.
On a side not, before I downloaded Azureus, thanks to this article, I was actually using more bandwidth downloading painfully slow torrents, as my up speeds were faster than down, and while I normally stop the torrent when my ratio hits one, I was instead maintaining a ratio around 3.
Well Mr. Bram Cohen is a bit clueless, if you live in a small town with one or two ISPs then your choices are limited, you can’t just cancle your account and go with a new ISP.
I heard that they, (The ISP’s), are planning to throttle down all packets that are unknown to them. Thus rendering packet encryption useless. It’s coming soon. The free lunch will soon be over.
If you are looking for speed, Newsgroups are the best way to go.
It’s called a fair use policy or acceptable use policy. Most ISP’s have them, this is disclosed to you when you purchase service, you just need to read the agreements your parents signed for you. Now some ISP’s will be vague in saying what is throttled.
There’s also the piracy concern. With the recording industries cracking down on P2P networks and subpoenaing abusers ISP’s have to make a descion on how to treat that type of traffic. Since we all know you guys are downloading your favorite porn movies, music, and videos why not throttle this traffic to make room for legitimate requests.
You are NOT paying for a 6mbps/512kbps (down/up). All broadband ISP’s I’ve ever had any interaction with provide UP TO, those famous two words. You get UP TO 6mbps/512kbps, you may get slower depending numerous variables and by abusing the acceptable use / fair use policy. An unlimited connection @ 5mbps synchronous from an ILEC/CLEC will normally run you a couple grand, about half of that is for local loop fees.
ISP’s are a business and profit from reselling bandwidth. Most smaller ISP’s oversell their pipes, because very rarely will they have their entire user base trying to download the paris hilton sex tape all at once. It does happen, and this is when congestion occurs. If the ISP is smart they use a bandwidth manager that implements certain bandwidth policies for users and protocols on the network to bring the equilibrium back to the network. That way users connections don’t time out, they just simply slow down until the congestion passes.
In sort your 39.99/month is peanuts, you’re not guaranteed anything and the ISP has total control of what protocols they decide to run on the network. You should be greatful the connection you do have and quit your bitching. :)
Or just buy through an ILEC if you’re fortunate enough to be in their access areas. They have the most bandwidth and usually don’t throttle anything.
[quote comment="498"]Completely worthless. I’m extremely disappointed that people who know enough to develop BitTorrent clients don’t know enough about networking to realize that this is completely pointless. Sure, encrypting the stream may get around a few packet shapers, at the moment but, unless they reconfigure BitTorrent to run everything, incoming and outgoing, over port 80 or 443 then it will be trivial to block BitTorrent.
BitTorrent is far too reliant on specific ports and far too reliant on those ports being open inbound. Because of this, it is ridiculously simple to block BitTorrent traffic. Encrypting the stream will not hide the fact that it is BitTorrent traffic. It will only prevent someone from identifying what the BitTorrent traffic is transferring. This may be a good thing for pirates but, it won’t stop the network administrator from blocking BitTorrent ports completely.
The truly successful P2P app will allow multiplexed up/downloads over SSL port 443. This will be encrypted and will appear like most other https applications. It will also traverse most any firewall and be stupidly simple for the user to operate. The down side is that it would require a centralized server to make it work so, it isn’t desireable for piracy but, I think this is also a good thing. I’m sure you’ll disagree with me on this one though because you no doubt feel that “sharing” music is your God given right and is not stealing or piracy.
Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent is doomed because it doesn’t work as well as it should (multiplexed downloads should perform far better than BitTorrent), it relies too heavily on opening obscure inbound ports, it is too hard for the average AOLer to get working, it is too easy to block.[/quote]
You can Have bit-torrent run on any port it is just like web servers running of your home pc if your isp doesnt allow it to run on 80 then run it on 8080. I am in favor of this encryption, I am using it now have noticed no speed decreases and very little cpu increase. I dont like how the RIAA and MPAA act like they can just sniff anyones network traffic and get away with it. I hope that Torrentspy and whatever other site is in a lawsuit wins and tells those stupid pricks that they are in fact breaking the law and all their practices are unconstitutional.
“I’m extremely disappointed that people who know enough to develop BitTorrent clients don’t know enough about networking to realize that this is completely pointless.
BitTorrent is far too reliant on specific ports and far too reliant on those ports being open inbound.”
- George W
Clearly you have never used BitTorrent before.
I’m With RogersCable… Ive been useing torrents for the last year just when i started to enjoy the service rogers starts messing with torrents…
I’m Not impressed i pay 45$ a month for internet speed the highest u can get with rogers and they are limiting me…
And personally Torrents Are so popular. Accept im starting to feel that utorrent and the big downloading program programmers dont seem to care about the people who have crap speed. Quit being little girls big deal u secure a line so they cant see what ur downloading and problem fixed if i could build it i would ..u guys are acting like girls… Build it and just put a warning up if u use this u may get in shit… simple
I’ve done everything under the sun. Changed port a million times, put the encryption in every possible configuration. I am with Rogers in Ontario and have purchased the Extream package….what a waste!!!
Blocking P2P only deters some.
If i want a movie I could just find it on a site and download through rapid share for instance, or even ftp or mIRC.
Blocking P2P prevents legal sites, providing legal torrents from operating properly, such as http://www.freelegaltorrents.com
I have a mixed opinion on this issue of encrypting the BitTorrent traffic. Personally I think that BitTorrent is a revolution.Here in India the fastest connection which can get theoretically is 2 MBPS. I can’t even believe that there exist connections like 10, 20 or 100 MBPS.
However using dial-up connection of my CDMA phone I was able to download a lot of data through BitTorrent in last 2 years or so. I also read the post by Bram Cohen on his blog and I have the following points to make:
1. First of all I think that the argument given by the ISPs that the BitTorrent and other P2Ps generate a lots of traffic does not sound logical enough. I mean what do they mean by lots? BitTorrent is basically an application level protocol which means that its using the underlying (underlay) TCP/IP model of the Internet. If an ISP is charging me for the “unlimited” Internet access at fixed monthly charges then I have all rights to use that to its maximum possible extent.The fact is that if the capacity of my connection pipeline is some amount “X” GB per month at maximum possible rate offered to me then I can not cross that limit and download more than that under any circumstances irrespective of I use BitTorrent or not. So this concept of “unlimited connection ” is really a misnomer because a fixed rate connection for a fixed period of time can only allow you to download a certain fixed maximum amount of data no matter what you do or how you use the connection and ISPs know this thing. So their blaming the BitTorrent users or the protocol is totally wrong. They are just trying to hide the failure on their part to provide the claimed/advertised service.
2. Now coming back to the encryption issue. I think its a good idea to perform traffic encryption so that BitTorrent traffic cant be detected by shapers or sniffers. But again it depends on the extent of the success of this scheme because as Bram mentioned on his blog, a protocol generating huge volumes of bi-directional traffic is bound to get caught and shaped sooner or later but as long as this scheme works, its fine.
3. I’m completely in agreement with the BitTorrent community but what I feel that we need is a middle solution which would result in a win-win situation for both sides. Lets admit friends that we the BT users need an ISP as much as the ISP needs costumer. I mean what if all the ISPs in the world start using Traffic Shaping or worse: what if they are able to crack the BitTorrent encryption method being used. So I guess that retaliation(from both sides) is not a solution.I personally want to use BitTorrent to its full capacity as I mentioned above.
4. Also I think that in place of traffic shaping or bandwidth throttling, the ISPs should pay more attention towards traffic localization.As we all know that as long as the traffic remains within an ISP’s network, the ISP does not have to pay anything but if lots of cross-ISP traffic is generated then the ISPs have to pay to the higher-up(Tier I and II etc.) ISP. In fact one of the prime reasons why BitTorrent traffic shaping takes place is because of the fact that it generates lots of cross-ISP traffic without taking into account the underlay connection of the peers and this comes costly for the ISPs.But traffic shaping is not a solution for this either as it’ll not reduce the amount of cross-ISP traffic but only degrade the performance at the customer’s end.
http://www.binitbhatia.blogspot.com
what this is too neeky stop the mumbo jumbo -rc4 encription good or bad what are he risks
[quote comment="105751"]what this is too neeky stop the mumbo jumbo -rc4 encription good or bad what are he risks[/quote]
yh i wanna know the same as dis guy
Found all the above helpful.
To let ppl- if ur on British Telecom (BT in UK) use Bittorrent on port 443 (https) and encrypt ur traffic (using azureus etc) and all is well
m294k
I love reading peoples’ posts from a year ago that were so confident in their views. Now crushed by the inevitable.. unveiling they’re stupidity
George.. I would spend more time thinking about your ideas before you express them with such confidence.
your a perfect example of ‘you can’t believe everything you read’
[quote comment="498"]Completely worthless. I’m extremely disappointed that people who know enough to develop BitTorrent clients don’t know enough about networking to realize that this is completely pointless. Sure, encrypting the stream may get around a few packet shapers, at the moment but, unless they reconfigure BitTorrent to run everything, incoming and outgoing, over port 80 or 443 then it will be trivial to block BitTorrent.
BitTorrent is far too reliant on specific ports and far too reliant on those ports being open inbound. Because of this, it is ridiculously simple to block BitTorrent traffic. Encrypting the stream will not hide the fact that it is BitTorrent traffic. It will only prevent someone from identifying what the BitTorrent traffic is transferring. This may be a good thing for pirates but, it won’t stop the network administrator from blocking BitTorrent ports completely.
The truly successful P2P app will allow multiplexed up/downloads over SSL port 443. This will be encrypted and will appear like most other https applications. It will also traverse most any firewall and be stupidly simple for the user to operate. The down side is that it would require a centralized server to make it work so, it isn’t desireable for piracy but, I think this is also a good thing. I’m sure you’ll disagree with me on this one though because you no doubt feel that “sharing” music is your God given right and is not stealing or piracy.
Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent is doomed because it doesn’t work as well as it should (multiplexed downloads should perform far better than BitTorrent), it relies too heavily on opening obscure inbound ports, it is too hard for the average AOLer to get working, it is too easy to block.[/quote]
I’t really works! i’m witch terra isp inn chile an i download at 5 kb/s max speed with this new function i download at 120kb/s!!! i’ts really an improve.
My ISP (Telus) kept sending me letter saying how I was using too much bandwidth, which on my end was the result of torrent. So what did I do? I installed Netlimiter and the letters stopped.
I’ve just enabled encryption on Asureus and I’ve seen a noticeable improvement in speed. It kind of sucks that while I was cooperative with my ISP they were not so cooperative with me.
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You are a bunch of loonies!
There are perfectly good reasons to block/limit Bittorrent.
Trying to work around make the Network administrators harder, and decrease the quality of service for Voice Over IP, videoconferencing and other needed services in the enterprise. The enterprise who pays for the damned Internet service must have the ability to prevent employees from downloading movies, or at least not taking the whole bandwidth
It’s easy to get around this issue. Purchase a VPN at http://www.strongvpn.com or the Relak place. They are cheap, and provide security too. My issues were gone, and I have other uses for it too.
Use VPN service
VPN Torrent
All you ISP nazis complain about people using 2 megs of bandwidth for several hours and say that it is abuse of the networks bandwidth, REALIZE THIS! You advertise 8 or 12 meg/sec download speeds, so thats what your should deliver. If you don’t want people using more than 512kbps, then sell them FU$%ING 512kbps. It is false advertising plain and simple. What else can I possibly download other than torrents that would ever make use of 8 meg down? EXACTLY, STFU!
Mr ISP
If your going to offer service @x MBPS than be prepared to deliver it 24/7
You were quick to advertise this speed,quicker to cash the check I send you for this stated speed,Now you are crying because youve actually been forced to deliver the product as advertised?
Mr Isp this is called BUSINESS and its in the dictionary.
If you find you cant deliver as promised services because I actually use them as advertised then why dont you advertise your self at less bandwidth instead of ripping me off?
When your customer base reaches the limits of your advertised bandwidth and you cant deliver you add new T1 lines….this is called corporate growth.
Mr Isp quit whinning over having to deliver….continue to play games and the smart consumers will answer in the best possible fashion and just mark “Cancel” on the bill.
I have a question to anyone that would like to answer it.
I read above that someone had been receiving letters from their cable company about their bandwidth usage. I have been using bit torrent for many years now and have never had a complaint from my ISP. In late January, a letter was sent to our old house that we have been trying to sell, saying something to the affect of knowing that “we” had been downloading illegal content and that they would like us to stop. I did not receive this letter, because my dad was the one who picked it up and did not show it to me. He’s rather ignorant regarding all of this stuff, so he probably crapped his pants. Still, I’m pretty sure it was a complaint regarding the bandwidth usage because I bought a 500 gig HD and I used it to its full abilities.
My question is: After 4-5 years of using torrents and receiving no complaints from my ISP, was the letter probably due to the large amount of stuff I acquired due to my 500 gig HD? I hardly ever acquire large amounts of stuff in such a short span of time and I’d like to be able to download here and there without fear of being “clipped” for the act of downloading with BT.
I am not being throttled in any way by my ISP, but after receiving a letter, I am now paranoid to download anything.
I guess I’m looking for some reassurance from people that know more about this stuff than I do.
Thanks to anyone who can help me out.
[quote comment="558"]I don’t understand why you guys are ignoring one of Brams principal objections – namely that it won’t work, as ISPs will still be able to packet shape traffic with more advanced shaping rules, and if one day it gets to the point where they can’t do that they’ll just enforce draconian rules on EVERYBODY. You guys are the few who are ruining it for the many, please stop![/quote]
Stuff like this is why I’ll be switching to a new ISP.
Sympatico now uses whitelist-based throttling and whenever someone else in the house is using BitTorrent, Subversion, DCC file send, and anything encrypted that doesn’t seem to be HTTPS will time out.
Yay for bellsouth! My ISP has a clean record so far.
So ESA is spying on people now?
“Dear Rogers Cable Communications Inc.:
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is a trade association that represents the intellectual property interests of numerous companies that publish interactive games for video game consoles, personal computers, handheld devices and the Internet in the United States of America, in Canada, and in other countries (collectively referred to as ESA members). ESA is authorized to act on behalf of ESA members whose copyright and other intellectual property rights it believes to be infringed as described herein.
ESA is providing this letter of notification to make Rogers Cable Communications Inc. aware of material on its network or system that infringes the exclusive copyright rights of and is unlawful towards one or more ESA members.
ESA members are entitled to the full protection of Canadian intellectual property laws, including the Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42, as amended, in such entertainment software products.
Based on the information at its disposal on 18 Apr 2008 03:50:38 GMT, ESA has a good faith belief that ******** infringes the rights of one or more ESA members by offering for sale or download unauthorized copies of game products protected by copyright, or offering for sale or download material that is the subject of infringing activities. The copyrighted works that have been infringed include but are not limited to:
Title: Assassin’s Creed
Infringement Source: BitTorrent
Infringement Timestamp: 18 Apr 2008 03:50:38 GMT
Infringement Last Documented: 18 Apr 2008 03:50:38 GMT
Infringer Username:
Infringing Filename: ***********
Infringing Filesize: 6899044196
Infringer IP Address: **********
Infringer DNS Name: **********
Infringing URL: http://218.145.160.136:8080/announce“
We run a network with shared internet access, and apparently do house such a ‘power-user’ who saturates the internet line 24/7 to the point where any realtime traffic for anyone else is pointless. They use BitTorrent, of course.
So, I have to shape them completely. I’d love to just shape their BitTorrent so that they can still use Skype, HTTP and everything as they wish, but since BitTorrent attempts to snake its way around the shaping, there is no other way than to shape the entire port on the switch down to a limit where I feel everyone else will be fine even if that bandwidth is used 24/7.
The point is really that sometimes such restrictions are in place for a reason. At the end of the day you shouldn’t use a service for something that causes problems for others.
HI, thanks for the topic.
I guess this is quit an old one for a lot people but as you might not now, in France a new law is making P2P Encryption popping in first page news.
The governement will force the ISPs to monitor P2P trafic an report it. After 2 mail telling you that you are Uploading illegal material, they will cut your Internet connection for a period of 3 months to a full year !!!
So, my question is simple, is this encryption protocol efficient enough in the ISPs are looking for this kind of trafis ?
If not, is there anoter and (or) better way to encrypt your P2P trafic?
Thx again and pardon my English… I’m French :p
fuck you ISP_Bob
Might I point out that in this arms race, the firewall/packet shaper is in a perfect position to be “man in the middle” and as such will be able to intercept any encryption key and use it to look into any encrypted content. Its only a matter of time.
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