NetEnforcer throttles encrypted BitTorrent traffic
Written by Ernesto on August 29, 2006The traffic shaping battle continues. Allot Communications announced today that their traffic management device “NetEnforcer is able to detect, and throttle encrypted BitTorrent traffic.
Allot Communications states:
Previously, companies have been able to detect and manage applications based on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file transfer protocol. However, detecting encrypted BitTorrent
has been nearly impossible.
They continue:
Today, Allot is announcing that its NetEnforcer is the first broadband traffic management device to identify and help manage applications based on the encrypted BitTorrent P2P file transfer protocol.
BitTorrent traffic is consuming 40-60% of ISP’s traffic, and more and more ISP’s started to block, and or throttle BitTorrent traffic for this reason.
Earlier this year, the most popular BitTorrent clients implemented RC4 encryption, to counter this bandwith throtteling. The BitTorrent encryption seems to work pretty well, and the topic led to a heated discussion on this site.
NetEnforcer is a new weapon for the ISP’s in the battle for bandwidth. The developers of Azureus, Bitcomet and uTorrent have some work to do if NetEnforcer can live up to its expectations.
Previously: The Swedish Pirate Party presents their election manifesto
Next: Tribler will integrate Youtube into their BitTorrent client
14 Responses
Those ISP sell U a product, so the use of this kind of thecno it’s a abuse and unhonest implementation, this have to be punish by the law…
Rogers I believes uses this type of shaper… If so it will be newer then most (was in our local paper) about how these were new and would “deal with the BT” problem as they put it.. As for my speeds on rogers.. my friend reports double the upload and nearly triple the download without timing out constantly etc (its setup correctly) [Hes on sympatico] Im going to be moving from Rogers soon.
Go Canada!.
I believe I’ve beaten the filter, quite easily, by configuring my P2P ap to use a LOW port number.
I won’t say which number, as I’m onto a good thing personally, which will be ruined if everybody configs to the same port, but others could experiment. All I’ll say is it’s less than 1000.
Don’t forget to poke a corresponding hole in your firewall / NAT / port forwarding.
Well, they can claim they can identify encrypted BT traffic, but they really cannot.
More likely they can identify encrypted traffic (which is easy) and all SSL/SSH traffic is just slowed down as well….
the makers of bit torrent clients will surely defeat this soon enough.
more important, the ISPs that try to stop up ONLY bit torrent will end up with other users that are unhappy (can you say AOL suks?) hehe
Users in UK are getting more and more of this, but here in the states its not as much as a problem.
donb
My isp jumped on the bandwagon..
if they are implmenting this new toy i think i will have to throw a brick through someones window.
come on bittorrent developers!
Yeah Cogeco is definitely using this, and targetting only a few specific uers. The problem manifests as an inability to upload faster than about 10kbps on average, where we should be able to do 70kbps upload. And with BT, if you dont upload, nobody sends you data, so download speed sucks too. The main thing is the upload though.
This traffic shaper tool they are using delays the ACK’s coming back from the other computer so it forces the TCP stream to slow down. It has no problem identifying encrypted BT traffic versus plain either, and makes them both suck at 10kbps upload.
Cogeco won’t yet admit to doing any shaping of any kind … but they are. And I’m not the only one experiencing this, there are a number (at least 5 of us) that have posted on DSLr about the issue.
Meanwhile my other ISP, a DSL provider, works properly. The same torrents quickly max the upload out at over 70kbps when I plug the router into the DSL modem instead of the cable modem.
Pipex, 24 hours 20k, they probably have this NetEnforcer, shall we kill those NetEnforcer developers?
Is this the only shaper that can detect encrypted BT connections? Because I think even Streamyx in Malaysia has blocked it. Last month they reduced it to 5kb/s. This month, it’s 0. And that was before the Taiwanese earthquake.
I am a small broadband provider in the southern states. Might I say that while I think some policies out there (5kb/s anyone) are just plain wrong, ISPs HAVE to throttle your traffic in order to survive. Most people act as if the 30-50 dollars they pay for broadband entitles them to unlimited bandwidth 24hours a day 7 days a week. The reality is that businesses pay sometimes 5 times as much as you for the bandwidth you get precisely because they are buying no/low oversubscription. If every home user (or even a tenth) started using torrent all the time, every single ISP would have to triple or quadruple their rates or just go bankrupt. Trust me, you wont get your torrents if all the isps go bankrupt. Instead, my policy is to allow nearly unlimited torrent speed during non-peak hours (midnight till 7am) and throtle to 35k up during the day. Is this type of policy something that the P2P community can live with?
[quote comment="52897"]Instead, my policy is to allow nearly unlimited torrent speed during non-peak hours (midnight till 7am) and throtle to 35k up during the day. Is this type of policy something that the P2P community can live with?[/quote]
It sounds reasonable. Even better should be limit such way overall traffic of each user. Maybe only shape “interactive” traffic (by increasing priority).
this means your banking information is no longer safe. this violates federal laws.
please dont kill us, they forced us to do it…
1 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.