ISP Restriction on Torrent traffic.

[Muad_dib77]

Hi Lads,

My stupid ISP has gotten fed up with people taking the urine and abusing their no DL limit policy, so they've somehow stuck a bandwith limit on torrent traffic.
I'm pretty sure it's possible to make torrent traffic look like oridinary http traffic, I just don't know how.
Any ideas?

(How do I know they've restricted it? I asked.)

If it was an option to simply go with a different provide I would - however as I live in the sticks it's Net1.ie or 56k modem.

ftp & http is still running at full whack.

[CJ]

I don't thing you're going to get around packet-shaping by obfuscating your IP address, the problem here is that bittorrent clients are overly dependant on specific ports, this makes it easy for ISPs to throttle traffic. That said, some clients offer a facility to get around the problem in some instances. Take a look at Bitcomet, it has UDP NAT ypass functionality built in which may help. Also give µtorrent a try, it uses RC4 encryption. IIRC, theres alsio a plugin for Azureus that encrypts traffic.

Ultimately, encryption at the client level is a bad thing, there are inherent network performance issues between obfuscating and non-obfuscating clients.

CJ

[Muad_dib77]

http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs

Apparently the solution is to force encryption and use port 22.

the theory goes that if the packets are unreadable they can't throttle them..

Fingers crossed.

[RussMan]

Sounds interesting all this ... Using the default SSH port for torrents, what else will they tunnel through port 22 i wonder...

i'd second the suggestion of using alternative client apps for torrent downloads... they all use slightly varying connectivity methods which your ISP may not have blocked / restricted... Another thing i'll say is contact your ISP and give them a rollocking ... You pay for full internet access , if some people go over their monthly allowances why should you suffer especially since you only use the torrent download method to download OpenSource data that you develop with ....

[Muad_dib77]

Ah You see russ - there's no monthly allowance with net1.ie - so they have to punish the infedels by alternative means!

But you're right I'm miffed.

I pay them just short of fifty squids a month for a service I want to use the way I see fit - and it's not like I'm downloading the interweb.

At the most I'd say I'm on 50gb a month, that's an absolute max.
I pretty much just donwload a couple of tv series so I can watch them with no ads. (Ads p1ss me off big time - I'd rather eat liver than watch ads!)

They've released the throttle a wee bit - when I left this morning I saw the occasional blip on 30-45kbps - still no where near what it's supposed to be at.

[CJ]

AThey've released the throttle a wee bit - when I left this morning I saw the occasional blip on 30-45kbps - still no where near what it's supposed to be at.

FWIW, I rarely get above 60kbit/sec torrent d/loads on a 3Mbit connection (eircom), I've always put it down to a lack of peers etc (my local firewall is configured to allow traffic in/out on the required ports).

CJ

[Muad_dib77]

Uhm - I used to be on 115 - 130 on my 1mbit connection. Since going to 2mbit It went up to 150 on occasion I'd hit 200/220 but only briefly..

[RussMan]

Ah .. i was downloading some stuff today and got 2.5 MB/s ahem

loving the 20 meg connection!

[CJ]

Ah .. i was downloading some stuff today and got 2.5 MB/s ahem

My trusty packet-shaper would be putting a stop to that I can tell ya

CJ

[Muad_dib77]

Ah that encryption frolicks was a barrel of poo. Gfalls application didn't do anything either. Bah Humbug.

I'll be sending net1 a nasty email in the morning - when I'm REALLY grumpy! (pre-coffee!)

Gits!