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
Previously: Filesharing Around The Globe
Next: George Bush vs. The RIAA?
286 Responses (Add yours)
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Hi, I’m from Argentina, here provider Fibertel limit all .torrent.
My speed transfer is very very slow now, i use azureus, can you help me please???THANKS
WOOT! WOOT!
I pay $50 bucks a month for high speed and they try to cap me. Thanks for helping me stick it to the man.
I’m from Argentina too, and my ISP “Fibertel” is blocking the .torrent networking. I think the Encryption config for BT Clients will help a lot in the future. Thanks.
P.D: How can a ISP tell you in newspapers and his very own site, that the conexions haven’t any surprises?
This is ridiculus…
P.D2: Sorry about my english :)
prueba
Brazilian http://www.velox.com.br is starting to block .torrent
Any tips for edonkey?
wow i started from 20kbs to 100kbs in 30 minuts, thanks a lot.
for those mac user that seem to have problems finding the encryption option, make sure you switch to intermediate user mode or higher
In order to do encryption in Azereus you need to set the MODE in the Options to Intermediate or Advanced. If you are set for Beginner, the encryption options are not shown. As others have noted above, Azereus is a Java application so platform doesn’t matter - I use Linux and it works fine.
Will it work for BitLord??? That would realy help me…
BitLord is a garbage version of BitComet 0.58. At this point in time the only client to switch to this PE/MSE option that µTorrent & Azureus created together is the official BitComet. Do not use the garbage copies based on old versions: BitLord & BitSpirit.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ve encrypted my bittorrent traffic and noticed almost 300% increase in my download speed. You’ve made my month!
Peace out…
Thank you so much! you are a very nice person to share this with everyone… you are a god!!! i couldn’t download anything at any speed for months because of clearwire. YAY YOU!
READ!
“Azureus, uTorrent, and Bitcomet”
NOT eMule, NOT BitLord, NOT your freakin’ toaster. Don’t keep asking, just learn to read. This is not a language issue, it is an idiocy issue.
This is also technology issue, not magic, so unless the code to encrypt and decrypt headers is included in your client THERE IS NOTHING YOU, OR ANYONE READING HERE, CAN DO.
Go get in touch with the developer of whatever client you use and talk to them. Offer assistance, funds, whatever. Consider changing to another client; Azureus, uTorrent, or Bitcomet would be good choices.
But STOP posting “what about …” IF IT IS NOT AZUREUS, UTORRENT, OR BITCOMET THE ANSWER IS *NO*.
:D thx, i switched back to azerues from utorrent, did this encryption thingy, and went from 6kb/s on utorrent to 100kb/s on azerues :P cheers!
My ISP the lovely Tiscali have been restricting bittorent for some time. Even with encryption I was unable to achieve a download of more than 8-10Kb/s on a 2mb connection on whatever port I selected ramdomly. But I was advised to use port 80 and since doing that my downloads have shot up to the max poss they could be (>200 Kb/s)
I’m on a Mac and decided to give it a go by d/l azureus. No such option?? Well, think I’ll stick with Transmission..
Thank you very much for this great guide
and thanks chillbob for the port 80 tip.
I a matter of seconds my d/l has gone from a poor 20 kB/s too my max.
Cheers top blokes one and all.
i have beginner pack of a azureus. how can i encrypt and increase the speed
Ok I did everything on this tutorial fine and i can still download fine. I even did the how to increase speeds tutorial on this site. Now whenever i download something its WAY SLOWER??? I’m not sure if my ISP is too stupid to cap or know what BT traffic is but I don’t want to get warned again :) any help would be gladly appreciated :)
Non abbonatevi a Libero, è strà filtrato, non apre nemmeno Google!!!
Regards from Italy!!!
Thanks for the info!
Gone from 9kbs to 90kbs with a well seeded torrent. Ah. Excellent
Make that 9kbs to 150 kbs ! There should be an alert telling you this info whenever you download a client.
Hello SIR!!! i’m using Azureus right now, when i open Tool->Option->Connection->Transport Encryption…they say…”this section is intended for Intermediate or higher. it is NOT available for BEGINNER mode.”
WHAT SHOULD I DO???….PLS HELP…PLS>>>>
Thank’s Sir!!
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