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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If Shaw in Canada is limiting BitTorrent traffic, I’m not seeing it. I haven’t seen any limitations at all.
None of these tricks work with Comcast sandvining.
We need new updates of clients with new RST-ignoring features, and fast.
thanks for this tip….
it really helps me a lot..
I use Telus and I’ve noticed lately that my speeds rarely go above 50kb/s sometimes reaching 100kb/s briefly. Usually max is around 160kb/s.
Thanks the uTorrent fix helped me !
Thanks for the uTorrent help! :D
they’ll have you suicidal,suicida. Nurit Hailey.
[quote comment="3039"]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!![/quote]
haha! Your Azureus is taking a piss at you!!
I’ve not had any speed issues with BT as my ISP. I regularly get 300k download speeds regardless of time of day (I use BitComet with encryption on). For example, I grabbed 700meg yesterday morning in less than 2 hours - sure there were plenty of seeders but I’ll not complain at that speed : )
The wireless router that BT chuck at you requires some configuring in order to get full download speed working, but there are plenty of sites out there that show you how to do this.
This did indeed help me :)
[quote comment="128969"]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]
Tnx a lot , this fixed my problems :D
PS:oh ,I have ADSL, not wifi,and it helped me
[quote comment="19472"]the more ports you opened , the more messed up your computer will become. Because hackers can just anything anytime. rite now my browser is being hacked. OMG..i hate this site. i warning all u guys. do not change your port settings. DO NOT OPEN PORTS.[/quote]
You are so ridiculously fucking stupid it’s not even funny.
see it’s very define,your one of a kin. Liesbeth Kiki.
[quote comment="2065"]Is encrypting just for fooling taffic shapping ISPs, or will this also provide anonymity?[/quote]
Anonymity, no. Privacy, yes. Note well the diff, Oh Newbie!
My Azureas is also telling me I can’t do the fix in beginner mode. How do i remedy this?
thanks!!!!
wow…
the best internet advice I have ever received.
thank you.
Thanks A lot
http://www.justf5.com
thanks for your looking to help those
of us that are in isolated and disabled
This is pretty screwed up. I was linked here by boingboing. I use Azureas, and I took the advise to encrypt my connection, which worked immediately. Days later, it went right back to not allowing me to seed. (using Comcast) Interestingly enough, when I tried to throttle my download so it would seed more as it was downloading, it immediately dropped my upload to zero. As soon as I returned the upload to “unlimited”, it started seeding the download again.
I’ll have to try more things to get the upload back, but it seems like at least Comcast knows whats up.
of course they know, and they will keep quite until it backfires on them. Then they will cover it up. What they are doing is illegal and tho can be proved wont hold up in court, which is why no one as of yet has sued over contract violation. That or comcast has hidden away a “you cannot sue” clause in which case i don’t know about it or where the **** they hid it.
I’m a Houston ComCast customer and this didn’t really help my download speeds. I bandwidth still gets throttled by Comcast. :\
I’m glad there are smart people like yourself out-there ready to take on Goliath companies and their attempts at restrictions.
This did nothing for my upload speed. Tried it several times on different clients … same result … throttled by Comcast.
how long does it take till the effects happen? is it right away? cause my internet is slow as shit now also.
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