How To Encrypt BitTorrent Traffic
Written by Ernesto on April 16, 2006More and more ISP’s are limiting and throttling BitTorrent traffic on their networks. By throttling BitTorrent traffic the speed of BitTorrent downloads decrease, and high speed downloads are out of the question.
The list of ISP’s that limit BitTorrent traffic, or plan to do so is growing every day, and according to the BBC, the ‘bandwidth war’ has begun.
Are you not sure if your traffic is being throttled Check the list of bad ISP’s.
But there is a solution. Encrypting your torrents will prevent throttling ISP’s from shaping your traffic. I will explain how to enable encryption in Azureus, uTorrent, and Bitcomet, the three most popular torrent clients.
What does encryption Do?
The RC4 encryption obfuscates not only the header but the entire stream. This means that it’s very hard for your ISP to detect that the traffic you are generating comes from BitTorrent.
Note that RC4 uses more CPU time than the plain encryption or no encryption. It is however harder to identify for traffic shaping devices
How can I do this?
This is different for all clients; check the setting for your favorite client below.
1. Go to: Tools > Options > Connection > Transport Encryption
2. Check the ‘require encrypted transport’ box.
3. Choose RC4 in the ‘minimum encryption’ dropdown box
note that RC4 uses more CPU time than the plain encryption or no encryption. It is however harder to identify for traffic shaping devices
4. You can choose to tick the ‘Allow non-encrypted outgoing connections if encrypted connection attempt fails’ box. This will ensure compatibility with clients that are not using encryption. However, it makes it easier for your ISP to detect BitTorrent traffic. I recommend that you try to tick this box first. If you are still not getting proper speeds untick it
5. Tick the ‘Allow non-encrypted incoming connections’ box
That’s it, your BitTorrent traffic is encrypted now.
1. Go to: Options > Preferences > Advanced > Connection
2. Go to: ‘Protocol encryption’ You can choose between ‘auto detect’ and ‘always’. Auto detect will give you more connections but offers less protection against traffic shapers.
I would recommend to try auto detect first, if that doesn’t increase your speeds you need to switch to always
That’s it, your BitTorrent traffic is encrypted now.
uTorrent
1. Go to: Options > Preferences > BitTorrent
2. Go to ‘Protocol encryption’, you can choose between ‘enabled’ and ‘forced’. ‘Enabled’ will give you more connections but offers less protection against traffic shapers.
I would recommend to try ‘enabled’ first, if that doesn’t increase your speeds you need to swich to ‘forced’.
3. Ticking ‘Allow legacy incoming connections’ allows non ecrypted clients to connect to you. This improves compatibility between clients but makes you more vulnerable to traffic shapers.
I would recommend to tick this box, but if that doesn’t increase your speeds, untick it!
That’s it, your BitTorrent traffic is encrypted now.
Good luck and happy torrenting
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286 Responses (Add yours)
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done and works fine for me, thanx, as a matter of interest in the uk phone tapping is classed as illegal, surely this is based on a similar thing what the ISP’s have been asked to do,
Hi i use to get around 22 to 24 kbps 1 month ago but suddenly i dont get good speed though the seeds are preety much high.my isp is you telecom .can you help i tried your method above but no improvement please help.
I use bitlord client, at your leisure can you review the steps for optimizing and encryption on that system please?
Thanks
wow the encripting thing worked wonders i was downloading at like 10k now its allmost 100 THANK YOU X
I use the Bit torrent client Transmission can anyone please help me I have basically no downloading speed whatsoever….
Thanks
I am in Houston btw, if this helps….
In the article about comcast blocking uploading it says simply enabling encyption will not suffice it has to be forced. How do you force it for Azureus?
Just tried to force encryption in utorrent and it doesnt seems to work, I still got 10k/s download. I am a Sympatico user, but not for long…
it takes like 5 hours for me to download a movie, it keeps saying not connectable a firewall/router is limiting your network traffic. I have the sprint 660 series LAN internet service there is no firewall on my connection does anyone know of a solution to my problem?
AS OF DECEMBER 6TH 2007
I dont feel like telling evrybody but since it’s information gathered here….
if you are MEMBER OF THE TWO BEAVER
YOU CAN UNLOCK YOU SPEED NOW!!!
HOW?!?!?!
USE UTORRENT
USE VOIP PORT
USE FORCED EMCRYPTION
ENJOY!!!
ID SUGGEST YOU LIMIT YOUR BANDWIDTH TO 150 KBS DURRING PEAK HOUR SO THEY DONT NOTICED YOU
NO BUG DEAL!
[quote comment="232038"]AS OF DECEMBER 6TH 2007
I dont feel like telling evrybody but since it’s information gathered here….
if you are MEMBER OF THE TWO BEAVER
YOU CAN UNLOCK YOU SPEED NOW!!!
HOW?!?!?!
USE UTORRENT
USE VOIP PORT
USE FORCED EMCRYPTION
ENJOY!!!
ID SUGGEST YOU LIMIT YOUR BANDWIDTH TO 150 KBS DURRING PEAK HOUR SO THEY DONT NOTICED YOU
NO BUG DEAL![/quote]
A member of where…be more specific
I have to know!
I’m not using keyword so this thread wont be deleted :P
THE TWO BEAVER IF YOU DONT KNOW THAT IT’S NOT UR ISP YOU MIGHT TRY WHAT I JUST TOLD ABOVE WILL WORK FOR MANY ISP WHO CAP YOU AT 30KBPS AT PEAK TIME !!!
AS OF 19 DECEMBER
LOOKS like the 2 beavers capped the P2P with voip port :( i will try to tweak things if not working im leaving that crappy capped ISP
Thanks
The only reason why I pay $50/month for Comcast is for torrenting. Otherwise, my much slower DSL (only $14/month) would work just fine for me. Plus, my DSL doesn’t block seeding. Eventually, if something doesn’t change, I’ll just get 2 DSL lines and drop Comcast. Why pay money for something you don’t need?
Hi!
My faq ISP limiting my torrent speed too (upc hungary)
I use Deluge client and I can download with full speed!
utorrent and azureus dowloading only 50kb/s.
Try it! Win version a little bit buggy, but is works!!!
f*ckin Bell is throttling me @ peak times (5pm-2am) I enabled encryption but they still throttle me in peaks time.So encryption does f*ck all for me.
f*ckin Bell is throttling me @ peak times (5pm-2am) I enabled encryption but they still throttle me in peaks time.So encryption does f*ck all for me.
First of all I want to thank everyone who has contributed to this awesome article on this great site.
I use Reliance Infocomm’s Broadnet WiMAX connection. It doesn’t matter if I limit my upload to 20% or Unlimited the download is at it’s 90% all the time. The only problem is that after 6hrs you’re logged out and you have to log in again. It is good in India, because you can’t block illegal software or multimedia because there isn’t a lot of legal stuff around :-). The only problem is that bandwidth is not as cheap as in most other countries (by Indian standards).
I have a couple of questions. Is there anyway I can squeeze the extra bit out of my connection? I use utorrent and by default the no of active downloads is 1. Does having multiple active downloads affect throughput?
One other thing - has anyone heard of a connection where it doesn’t affect your download speed even though you max out on the upload.
Thank you.
I recently encrypted my torrent to get it to work and it did start working fine but the next day during normal business hours they noticed i had a lot of traffic from multiple users and shut my internet back off. When I called they said I had 75 users sharing files with me and that they do not allow p2p file sharing. They also said that that was strike one and they have a 3 strike program. The third strike and they come take your hardware.
WEll… You guys prolly know that the hardware capping at 30kpbs between 5PM and 1AM then 60kps from 1AM to 2AM is called Vine-Sand inverted :P (once again i’m not using keyword so this ONLY useful thread on the WWW wont get deleted)
It’s officially used by Cumcast, Twobeaver and RogĂ©rs.
How it works for those who dont know…
They first off all install new hardware at ther HQ :P and then they filtre evry account (using another account like business account would solve ur problem).
Anyway so now that they filter you they can easly intercept Packets from any software such as utorrent and emule. NOW what they do,,, They do, when they thinks that the number of connections and d/l or u/l speed is fine… they manage it by closing connexion between you and the others… *Seeders/leechers relations). They take a paket, they add an RTS flag or sumthing TO BOTH OF YOU!!! SEED n LEECH!
So so far you can Re-intercept the retransmitted packet!!! and ignore that RTS flag, wich intent to end communication with this S/L.
If ur smart u undersand that the other S/L have received the RTS falg and he’s not smart as you and is not ignoring it !!! Some bittorrent designer are now thinking about a way to add an option for US :P
You can still tweak ur side but good luck… cause i’ve done it and still not convinced it works…
Try the software Ethereal… and sniff ur bandwith… ull see those retransmitter packets :P:P:P
SEE YA !!
If anyone ever reads this far down the list….
KTorrent (Linux only) supports protocol encryption. I just went and turned that on, with “allow unencrypted connections”, for the benefit of those who need encryption to make their dealie bobs work right.
BTW KTorrent also supports IP blocklists but that appears to be an unreliable feature - probably better to use MoBlock, http://moblock.berlios.de/
:o)
:o)
“Hi!
My faq ISP limiting my torrent speed too (upc hungary)
I use Deluge client and I can download with full speed!
utorrent and azureus dowloading only 50kb/s.
Try it! Win version a little bit buggy, but is works!!!”
I tryed deluge… doesnt seem to work for me …. there is a cpl of feature in there i dont understand
If somebody here knows how too use Delude torrentclient pls share :P
[quote comment="2121"]facil ;>[/quote]
If you cant do it now you are giving all of us mac users a bad name.
[quote comment="2118"]for you mac users that are apparently confused by the pc-centric menu references in the instructions provided:
In Azureus, go to the Azureus menu and select Preferences –> Connection –> Transport Encryption. The options on this screen are identical to the options described in the instructions.
Now pack up your iMac and send it back for not figuring this out on your own. You’re giving the rest of the Mac community a bad name. Shame on you.[/quote]
Guys you need to get a grip.
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