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)
Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 [6] 7 8 9 10 11 … 12 » Show All
I’m in Spain and not only does my ISP (YA COM, part of Deutche Telekom) not throttle my bt downloads (currently maxing out connection downloading LINUX distros) but it actively encourages users to make the most of what they are paying for and their user area for their site shows in detail how to configure supplied routers / other equipment etc. to improve experience with software such as BitTorrent clients and Emule
About a month ago, I was seeing speeds of 150 KB/s on the average (which is my limit down stream), 2 weeks ago, I noticed my speeds tremedously lower, around 2-5 KB/s. After applying the encryption I’m now back up to around 75 KB/s, a lot better, but at only half mass of what I used to see. Thanks for the help though!
hi ive just signed up to pipex not knowing about the torrent throttling :-( so now that im tied to 12 months with this shower of bastards i NEED to get my torrent spped issues resolved.
ive tried all of the above but still cannot get my speeds back up, currently using utorrent with port 80 being used, forced encryption and legacy connections unchecked but still no joy.
can i ask what virus/firewall software everyone is using? im using kaspersky alongside windows firewall with utorrent in the exceptions list, is this wise? or is this prob half my problem?
im at the end of my tether now, feel like crying being tied to this for 12 months :-(
thanks
Tony
TMnet Sucks big time!.. im so frustrated.. and in malaysia they are the only internet provider so its pretty much useless… well there is jaring.. but they suck even more.. so why bother.. haha… i hope the torrent clients come up with something better than rc4 encryption… please?..
I’m too is on Streamyx(Tm Net), using utorrent went from10kbps to 80kbps!!!!!!!
you guys ROCK!!!!!!!
hi! i live in argentina, and mi english is really poore, but i can speak a little… and i wanto to say: THANKS!! OMG! i download a lot of things, and mi f*** internet provider (fibertel) encript all mi downlads… in consecuence… 20 kb/s… now 100 ;)
again the problem… 20 kb
hmmmmmm for utorrent normally put encryption enabled and untick the box ‘allow incoming legacy connection’ ?
using tmnet. sigh. not getting speed from torrent community site.
sites like torrentreactor and mininova, there’s a bit of speed though.
malaysia has one (1) ISP only for the goddamn country, and they’re throttling+capping at the same time. noboby knows what to do anymore,
Same problem here as everone else it seems.
Last month I was getting speeds of 150KB mostly. Now my ISP has put a ridiculously low cap of 10KB on torrent download and that isn’t per torrent … that is total … u can run 5 torrents and the total speed of the 5 doesn’t go above 10 KB … the moment it reached 12 or 13 … down it goes to 10.
I tried the encryption and for a second there my upload speed went up to 30K … dld hadn’t started as yet … and then guess what … back down to 10K.
Any ideas? Any other ways. 10K is ridiculous. I might as well go back to dialup if I want a crappy download speed.
I”ve tried the different ports and for VOIP port it says that is already in use, plz try something else. For 80 its giving me a firewalled Nat … the higher numbers all give 10K speed eventhough NAT is ok. This is highly frustrating.
am from Malaysia too (using Streamyx) and because the recent slow speed, so I found here. turning on the encrpytion helps a little. but one thing I notice is, with and without encryption, my upload is always at the max (as limit in preference), why is that?
Mac OS X Tiger
Azureus 2.5
I’m from Malaysia too. The only reason for broadband is to download large files.
If Streamyx is capping BT then they should anounce it, so users can decide if they want to contimue wasting their money paying RM88 for 1MB unlimmited package. If the speed doesn’t increase by net Feb 2007, I’m going to downgrade my package. Let see if hurting their pockets will make them change their policy.
[quote comment="25212"]I’m from Malaysia too. The only reason for broadband is to download large files.
If Streamyx is capping BT then they should anounce it, so users can decide if they want to contimue wasting their money paying RM88 for 1MB unlimmited package. If the speed doesn’t increase by net Feb 2007, I’m going to downgrade my package. Let see if hurting their pockets will make them change their policy.[/quote]
Im running on 2Mbit for the price of one (although havent received my first invoice yet) So far I try Utorrent and although not really spectacular it is the best of all so far. Hereby I like to state that Streamyx boys nasty cocksuckers ….
Streamlousyx user here too, running BC 0.70, my place runs at 60KB/s for around an hour then goddamn ISP cut it, need to disconnect & connect again & again & again & again…. really fuck ! damn deepthroater ! chau hai !
Hello, i would mind some help from any as i would appritiate it very very much !
Firstly, i found out my ISP has Traffic with P2P programs, and was woundering if theres a way to cheat this and get unlimited speed as Normal… any ideas any one ? I cant even reach 40kb its terrible, i remember last year i usto get speeds up to 250kb per sec, now cant even get 40kb, please help. dimstratis3@hotmail.com if any one wishes to help me…. Kind Regards
hi, I have learned a lot about torrenting thanks over the weekend thanks to this site. !!!
I like the idea of using typical VOIP ports for torrenting instead. When port-forwarding.com lists suggested ports for various torrent software, (not all 6881+), don’t you think a throttling ISP might start looking for certain port and traffic combinations?
But I don’t like the idea of using port 80, I do like to keep surfing while torrents are running. (Unless I could force the browser to use a different port?)
Anyway what are some typical ports commonly used by non-torrenting programs? Still learning this stuff here.
I switched to Azureus and encryption and on my first torrent afterwards immediately got speeds over 200KB/s at times. But on subsequent torrents I peaked only around 50. This was a huge improvement over 1-2 though. I think on my first torrent I got lucky with some seeders that were also able to run as wide open as possible, but subsequently I haven’t lucked into connections like that. All I’m doing is torrenting legally tradeable audio torrents of generally a half gig or so, so perhaps most people doing that haven’t gotten as deep into running encryption as they don’t need to as much. ???
[quote comment="27673"]hi, I have learned a lot about torrenting thanks over the weekend thanks to this site. !!!
I like the idea of using typical VOIP ports for torrenting instead. When port-forwarding.com lists suggested ports for various torrent software, (not all 6881+), don’t you think a throttling ISP might start looking for certain port and traffic combinations?
Anyway what are some typical ports commonly used by non-torrenting programs? Still learning this stuff here.
[/quote]
If you get speeds like that your ISP is probably not throttling anyting at all. And about the posrts… you can use any post you like. Just open the post in your router to make sure the traffic comes through.
before clicking the encrypt option on Azureus I averaged 1-2 KB/s. perhaps I wasn’t being throttled, it is hard to tell, and perhaps when I tried encryption I was suddenly connected to a few high bandwidth seeds who wouldn’t otherwise connect unencrypted.
is there a forum anywhere that discusses this in a simpler way than appending comments on to a blog entry? (albeit a great blog here)
Is there a way to enter websites blocked by isp? Originally I am from Poland and there I had no problems. But right now i Am in United Arab Emirates and the isp has blocked a huge amount of websites incorrectly.Maby there is some internet explorer or something like that Please Help me!
Doesn’t make a lick of difference for me with Cogeco in Canada. Turn it off, crap, turn it on crap.
Pipex, azures, utorrent, bitcomet, all tried, no luck, always 20k, 24 hours, fuck them….
This is very sad… I’m from Argentina, just got SION ISP, I’ve tried everything you suggest here, default port changing, activating/forcing encryption, switching from bitcomet to utorrent… NONE works!! The details for the torrent show Upload speeds of 7.5, 6.2 KB/s for some users, while the Downloads are most likely 0.1!!!! This is deppressing! Anyone has a suggestion?
U can use VPN (private network) to alter ur ip address.
>> U can use VPN (private network) to alter ur ip address.
any references how to do that in Mac OS X and Windows XP Pro?
Thanks
im on Rogers… RC4 works great!!
thanks for the info!!
Pages: « 1 2 3 4 5 [6] 7 8 9 10 11 … 12 » Show All
Add your response