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?
289 Responses (Add yours)
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This encryption works fine with utorrent, have been downloading days without problems, before using it they shut down my connection after i had downloaded few hours, and had to restart modem and computer to start downloading again.
But i like azureus more, will soon try it with your advice, hope it works:)
does anyone know if i can used any other sites to seach and use through bitlord, except torrentman?
cheers
My biggest complaint with Azureus and all the other BT clients: They don’t do this stuff automatically or even tell you when you download them. They should tell you about SafePeer and PeerGuardian when you download them. Instead you have to wait for LogiStep’s “warning service” >:-(
Hi,
I tried this with Utorrent and there no change!….is thre anything else i can do, i really want my old speed back and right now i have to download at night to get full speed which is crap and sucks big time…any hep is appreciated!!!!!.
this is working??
I tried this to VIRTUA SP…
and the download still 35..
I Have a 2mb connection =/
Thanks thanks thanks thanks…
I live in Albania and the owner of my isp is an old friend of mine but lately he was bitchin and trying to slow me down.I totally fucked him with this trick…HAHAH Wait till i tell him he’ll freak out….
Rakshasa’s BitTorrent client (rtorrent) version 0.7.4 also supports encrption.
# ~/.rtorrent.rc and enable/modify the options as needed.
# Encryption options, set to none (default) or any combination of the following:
# allow_incoming, try_outgoing, require, require_RC4, enable_retry, prefer_plaintext
#
# The example value allows incoming encrypted connections, starts unencrypted
# outgoing connections but retries with encryption if they fail, preferring
# plaintext to RC4 encryption after the encrypted handshake
#
# encryption = allow_incoming,enable_retry,prefer_plaintext
[quote comment="85633"]im with bt in england an lately my torrent speeds will be downloading at max speeds then will get stuck on 10-15kbps for hours and hours although the http and ftp speeds are fine, tried useing encryption with u torrent but doesnt work :( …never used to happen with ntl[/quote]
exactly the same, gonna try bitcomet maybe
[quote comment="2068"]i use a mac and Azureus.
it doesnt have feture…[/quote]
Get the newest version an you’ll find it in the options.
Does doing this also make the ISP not be able to detect what you are doing? I was sent a warning letter for downloading Fansubbed anime. They even named the exact files. It was more creepy than anything else… I don’t want that to happen again.
First off, protocol encryption does nothing to prevent tracking of downloads by RIAA, MPAA, M$ or any other organizations, because the tracker has to tell them your ip so you can download anything, and then they can just download the file from you like anyone else, encryption or no. PeerGuardian like firewalls are next to useless for this too, since any serious paid investigator would get a consumer dynamic ip connection and be indistinguishable from the millions of other users. It is not the ISPs that monitor your traffic, it’s the organizations themselves going “undercover” in p2p networks.
Back to traffic shaping prevention:
For the few asking about encrypting / obfuscating the tracker traffic, there is a really simple way for this: use any encrypting http proxy. Simplest is to use the Tor network, http://tor.eff.org/ Just use your local tor privoxy to encrypt the tracker traffic and youre all hidden. Communication over Tor is slow, but the tracker traffic is so low bandwidth that there is no effect on download speed. WARNING: Don’t under any circumstances torify your *data transfers*, this will only cripple your download speed beyond belief and damage the Tor network.
[quote] im with bt in england an lately my torrent speeds will be downloading at max speeds then will get stuck on 10-15kbps for hours and hours although the http and ftp speeds are fine, tried useing encryption with u torrent but doesnt work :( …never used to happen with ntl
exactly the same, gonna try bitcomet maybe[/quote]
i tried bit comet and azures but no change … i phoned brittish telecom and asked about it and they deny that they throttle bit torrent traffic.. fookin liars!! …. iv noticed tho that the speeds resume full speed between about 1am untill i close my bit torrent client, and if i dont close it by about 8-9 am then zone alarm goes crazy and the true vector prt crashes… so i shut Z/A down completely an restart it leaving u torrent running an it happens again and again but u torrent is still at max speed… but as soon as i restart u torrent my zone alarm will stop crashing and u torrent will be capped again untill about 1am the next day .. and this happens religiously at them exact times every day lol…coincedence?? i think not .. im sure brittish telecom do it to make me close my u torrent down for the day …..
any hardcore torrenters from uk i advise to avoid brittish telecom like the plague
Sorry to say, but encryption doesnot fool my ISP at all !
THANK YOU!
hey guys i’m form malaysia n using maxis wireless net. at the beginging i was usin bitcomet n it was workin fine. then it started to stop downloadin anything..
i tried the stuff down here but still its not workin.
the otherday tried usin warez n it was so superb for only 2 days n it was blocked also..
is there any software to bypass the stupid ISP for my bitcomet??
hope u guys can help me
thnx in advance
[quote comment="2821"]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.[/quote]
[quote comment="2821"]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.[/quote]
hey guys, i think theres a few feature with utorrent with complete encryption. which is different then what has been said and shown.
Hotspot shield solved my problems. I use FIBERTEL none of the encryption methods worked for me.This prog. creates a VPN used to encrypt wifi traffic so what it does is connect you to it server gives you a new ip address and sends all the traffic encrypted, you can even see blocked pages ( for china ), what you have to remember to do is to ad the VPN server adress to your proxy settings.
[quote comment="28459"]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![/quote]
use Hotspot shield that should work fine.
I just wanted to say Thank you for this info.
[quote comment="2081"]but what about ISP restricting the access of bittorrent tracker? (like banning the access of all URL with “announce”)
is there a way to workaround this?[/quote]
does this work on Maxis broadband? I just get 3-10kb/s. is there anyway to break this? my listen port ,random port which is around 40000-60000 is blocked too (yellow icon in bitcomet). can any one help me? there is no Port forwarding for this kind of Maxis connection. I tried http://192.168.0.1 and there is only a few and simple settings, surely it is no a router.
So both Streamyx and the new Maxis Broadband are controlling BT? what the fuck!
Yes British Telecom is now throttling bit torrent until about 2am -6am , I ge 5-10k from my 8mb bb on p2p.. http dl speeds are fine normally too so definate throttling on p2p. I feel like I’ve been ripped off, i’m going to complain to ofcom as they have mislead me in the sale of their product.
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