Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade

StonyandCher writes "More and more ISPs are blocking or throttling traffic to the peer-to-peer file-sharing service, even if you are downloading copyright free content. Have you been targeted? How can you get around the restrictions? This PC World report shows you a number of tips and tools can help you determine whether you're facing a BitTorrent blockade and, if so, help you get around it."

Glasnost

[Tobenisstinky (853306)]

Slashdotted already...

Re:Glasnost

[timelorde (7880)]

Unless, of course, your ISP is blocking that, too...

Re:Glasnost

[xXDarkNinjaXx (525539)]

+5: Creepy...

Re:Printable version

[Nullav (1053766)]

I think OP meant Glasnost has been Slashdotted. (Though I almost didn't know that, thanks to PCWorld also being 'dotted.)

Australia is lucky

[mrbluze (1034940)]

.. kind of lucky, anyway.

We have a website [whirlpool.net.au] which provides pretty detailed information on what the ISP's are up to. Because there are so many members, I think the ISP's are sitting up and paying attention to a degree, because it's really not that expensive to change providers now.

So here it's just a matter of choose your carrier and tell the other telco's to piss off.

Re:Australia is lucky

[QuantumG (50515)]

There is nothing lucky about competition in the Australian broadband market. We forced the monopolist to open their network and we enforced the laws to keep the competition healthy. The fact that the USA is incapable of doing this is proof that they have lost control of their political system and they're the first to admit it.

Re:

[mrbluze (1034940)]

We forced the monopolist to open their network and we enforced the laws to keep the competition healthy.

That's true, and activism still works in Australia - except in Tasmania, of course (the place where you see bumper stickers reading "Tasmania, Smell the Corruption").

Re:Australia is lucky

[by Anonymous Coward]

speaking of losing control of your political system, how much is the fine for owning a freaking laser pointer in Australia again?

pot, meet kettle.

Re:Australia is lucky

[kylehase (982334)]

up to 14 years in jail [slashdot.org]. 20 years if it's mounted on a shark. Probably more if it's on a great white.

Re:Australia is lucky

[QuantumG (50515)]

It's the American form of arguing.

Re:Australia is lucky

[fractoid (1076465)]

Some tools ordered high-power (up to a Watt or two, I think) lasers off some website and then pointed them at planes because planes are big and far away and going "yay I can make a dot on a plane" is fun. The pilots, however, thought variations of either "oh shit the world just went bright green and now I can't see" or "we have incoming at two o'clock, prepare evasive maneuvers".

And in its usual hysterical-nanny way, the government decided to ban ALL laser pointers because apparently it's easier to do that than to try and outlaw 'stupid'.

Re:Australia is lucky

[iminplaya (723125)]

They didn't lose control. They gave it up willingly, for the sake of convenience. If they actually cared, they wouldn't keep on voting for the one who can flash the most cash. They would seek out and vote for candidates who aren't so allied with big business. But... it's more convenient to just vote for the guy that mass media presents to them. Then bitch about it till the next cycle, repeat. If they would admit it, they would be on the first step towards a cure. As it is, the 45 year decline will continue for at least four more. There is no end in sight. Australia doesn't really look [slashdot.org] any [slashdot.org] better [slashdot.org]

Re:Australia is lucky

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

Not really.

You have to start with the party and take control at a much earlier stage.

In america by the time the voting for a candidate in either major party takes place, you've already lost to the corporations.

Canada is basically monopolized too

[tentimestwenty (693290)]

If you want broadband you've got basically 2 companies to choose from depending on where you live. Both suck. It won't be long before they really put the screws to people. Prices are going up and so are restrictions.

Canada too

[phorm (591458)]

For example, look at the recent shenannigans with Bell and those subletting their monopolized line-system. The regulating bodies basically just said that Bell is doing nothing wrong by throttling or otherwise screwing with the traffic of the 3rd-party ISP's customers, because there's no proof it will cause lost business.

Hello! The ISP's cannot provide the indicated level of services due to the interference of a third party. Screw loss of business, that's a pretty major way of screwing the customers, who now have absolutely zero choice for ISP's who aren't handing it to them up the tailpipe (Rogers, the non-DSL ISP, also throttles). So is it fair that customers aren't "leaving" because they're getting equally screwed elsewhere?

When I last spent time in Aus, I was amazed by how closely they kept tabs on their politicians and policies. North America in general could learn a lot from them in that regard.

Switch ISP

[Joce640k (829181)]

My ISP started messing around with this, I called them to ask about it and they flat-out denied it.

When I looked on the message boards and everybody else was in the same boat, I called again. This time they said they were throttling, but only at peak hours (not true - but that was the official line).

Next day I called their competitor. As soon as the line was installed (2 days) I called and told them I was switching, and to who.

The basic problem here is ...

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

that the cable companies don't consider (or don't want to have to consider) the consumer of their broadband offerings as their customer. They'd much rather have us be parasites on their network, parasites who happen to be targets of profitable marketing campaigns. The ad injection nonsense that a number of ISPs have launched is indicative of this attitude: we're just eyeballs attached to brains that view commercials.

Re:The basic problem here is ...

[grommit (97148)]

You must understand that the advertisers don't care if we're just eyeballs attached to brains. They're mainly concerned with whether or not we have a credit card to purchase whatever they're selling.

Re:The basic problem here is ...

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

Isn't that what all monopolies want us to do? All MS wants us to do is keep paying for needless Windows licences while they don't improve it much, pay for Office because MS can't be bothered to include a decent word processor, pay for Windows OneCare because they can't fix their swiss-cheese OS, pay for DRM-ed music because they belive that all anyone does with DRM-free music is share it (and of course we all know that transfering media from your computer to a CD-ROM/MP3 player/another computer is morally wrong!11!11!) All the oil companies want us to do is pay for the $4/gallon of gas while beliving all the "oil is scarce" nonsense. All the government wants us to do is keep being patriotic so they can go on witch hunts for "terrorists" on American citizens. To keep us in paranoia about how obviously they need to wiretap more American phones because they might be a terrorist. To keep help "keep crime down" by restricting our second amendment right to bear arms. All the record companies want us to do is keep buying a copy of a song for every device we own. To believe in all this "piracy" nonsense and how if you transfer your legally bought CD to a computer/MP3 player/another CD/Home server is now illegal. To believe that fair use is illegal. To make us believe that all "pirates" bring down the economy/cause global warming/are responsible for drownings/deface Internet sites or other outrageous things.

The fact is, monopolies are much like oppressive governments, they try to make the public not think. But to just exist and "consume" whatever crap they throw at us.

Re:The basic problem here is ...

[jamstar7 (694492)]

That's mostly because we're not their customers, we're their product. Their advertisers are their customers.

Protest

[Pig Hogger (10379)]

Protest by paying the bill in pennies or any other kind of creative check-writing various tax departments have been the victim of...

Re:Protest

[by Anonymous Coward]

It's been a long time since you could do that. There have been court cases establishing the right of a company to refuse small change.

However, what you can do is to pay each charge on the bill with a separate cheque, on separate days. One day pay the basic cable, the next day the box rental, the next day, the remote control rental, then the FCC charges, et cetera. And if they ever screw it up and re-charge you for something you've already have paid (which guaranteed won't take long, since their system isn't set up to handle itemized payments), put the money from then on into an escrow account and only send them slips showing the money has been deposited, pending them fixing their error. If they close you down, sue them -- there's no way you're going to lose if you can document that you made all the payments until they started sending erroneous bills, and continued to place money in escrow until they could present a correct bill.

Or, just abandon the service, since "service" doesn't include service.

Re:Protest

[witherstaff (713820)]

In the US it's against the merchant policies to tack on extra fees for credit/debit. Visa/MasterCard/Discover/Am Ex/etc all are equal to cash.

But you can give a cash discount. It's wacky and lame and almost no one does that.

Re:Protest

[Insightfill (554828)]

Funny. Comcast charges me $3.95 to pay with my credit/debit card.

The VISA Merchant Rules [64.233.167.104] (Google cache - I'm having problems with the real link) on Page 15 says that they can't charge extra for a credit card transaction, but CAN charge a "convenience fee" (wink wink), but there are a bunch of rules on when they're allowed to do this. They're probably in compliance with all of them, but there's a small chance they've messed up on this one: "The customer must be given a opportunity to cancel prior to completion of the transaction."

Re:Protest

[dwater (72834)]

eh? you sent your wallet to the wrong address, and then signed it 'santa clause'?

Did you miss out some crucial bit of information in your post?

I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No"

[JohnnyComeLately (725958)]

My PC can run for months/weeks/hours of being on and have no problems with the connection. The moment I run LimeWire, the problems begin. 9 times out of 10 I end up having to reboot my cable modem to get back on-line....despite the fact my cable modem shows normal activity.

Re:I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No"

[FooAtWFU (699187)]

For what it's worth, the network load induced by BitTorrent can be sufficient to cause (low-quality) cable modems, broadband routers, and similar devices to become flaky, while they are capable of handling the relatively quiescent and straightforward data streams associated with "normal" use.

Re:I dont quite trust their list...Cox says "No"

[BLKMGK (34057)]

That may be the hardware and not the ISP. Some modems puke when they get too many connection attempts - Limewire and Bitorrent can cause this behavior. You might want to try a different cable modem.

Anti-trust?

[hyades1 (1149581)]

It will be interesting to see if a major ISP steps forward with an offer to provide completely unthrottled service, perhaps at a premium price.

Would an across-the-board failure to offer such an obvious consumer winner provide grounds for charges of collusion or racketeering?

They already do

[patio11 (857072)]

Every major ISP sells completely unthrottled, you bought-it-enjoy-it bandwidth to businesses. Get yourself a T1 line, never worry about being throttled again! Prices are quite reasonable starting at about $600 to $1200 per month.

Its an obvious consumer winner!

Verizon seems alright

[dave562 (969951)]

I've had pretty good luck with Verizon DSL. For a moment I was considering switching to cable but with all of the horror stories I've seen around here regarding bitTorrent clients I've stayed away from cable. The only time I ever had a problem is when I was seeding some popular, copyrighted music that I pulled down off of a site that I found via a Google Search. It was kind of creepy. As long as I was seeding the file, my transfer rate went down to near zero. Once I stopped, it went back up to my full speed. I tried it out a few times over a couple of days just to make sure that I wasn't imagining things and sure enough, every time I seeded that one file my connection slowed to a crawl.

Re:Verizon seems alright

[totally bogus dude (1040246)]

You should be able to set the maximum rate your bittorrent client will upload at. If you set it to 80-90% of your maximum upload speed you should be able to surf and download without problems while it uploads. Experiment and see the performance you get.

You can also do more general traffic shaping, which will maintain a queue at your router and insert 'interactive' traffic before bulk uploads. A bit more complicated to set up but more robust. If you're the only one using your connection though and BT is the only thing you have uploading, using the client's throttle setting is good enough.

The reason it slows down your connection is that as you're downloading anything (e.g. a web page) you need to send acknowledgement packets to the sender before it'll send the next packets containing the content. Since you're uploading at full pelt, those acknowledgement packets have to wait behind the larger file upload packets before they get sent. Traffic shaping / prioritization lets them skip to the head of the queue.

Re:Verizon seems alright

[whyDNA? (9312)]

Agreed. I'd specifically recommend the "Wonder Shaper" http://lartc.org/wondershaper/ [lartc.org] from the kind, albiet insane, folks at the Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control site.

Careful though; spending too much time there might cause mental grief (for example, go read Section 12.1.3 of the LARTC HOWTO [lartc.org]), but I digress.

On the other hand, if you're fluent in this and/or like working in the kernel networking stack, shoot me an email/message, cause I've got a fun job for you.

Don't elude...get a different ISP

[ucblockhead (63650)]

I don't have this problem because I am willing to pay more for service from an ISP like Speakeasy that does not do this. If you want these companies to change, you need to be willing to hurt their bottom line even if it costs you more.

Re:Don't elude...get a different ISP

[bagboy (630125)]

ISPs are glad to get rid of the unprofitable consumers... You'll be doing them a favor by switching as you'll tax the throttling equipment less and less and leave more bandwidth for others.

ISP

[codepunk (167897)]

A friend of mine runs a ISP, he has a very simple policy that works out
rather well. He does not go out of his way to regulate what people do
on the network until it causes a issue. Bit Torrent is a bandwidth hog
and attempts to evade filtering rather well. If he encounters issues
caused by a Bit Torrent user he just hands them their money back
for the month and drops them as a customer. This keeps the rest of the
network clean and the other customers happy. The profit margin on each
connection is so very thin that it just does not pay to mess with this
extremely small portion of the customer base.

Re:ISP

[Mr2001 (90979)]

Bit Torrent is a bandwidth hog and attempts to evade filtering rather well.

BitTorrent only "hogs" as much bandwidth as the human user causes it to. It's no different in that sense from any other application: other P2P systems, YouTube, email, whatever. If you want to spend all day uploading email attachments at full speed, you can do that, and you'll use just as much bandwidth as if you were seeding torrents at full speed.

On the other hand, you can set a low rate limit in your torrent client, and/or set it to stop seeding once it reaches a certain share ratio, and you'll only use a moderate amount of bandwidth.

There's absolutely no need to treat BitTorrent differently from any other application. You don't need to use "filtering"; just limit bandwidth. If a customer is using too much bandwidth, charge him for the overage or lower his cap. It doesn't matter whether he's running BitTorrent, LimeWire, or just sending a lot of emails: all that matters is his total usage.

Re:ISP

[Mr2001 (90979)]

You know, you might be theoretically right here, but I honestly don't think you could (and certainly not in any remotely realistic workload) max out any DSL/Cable/+ connection doing email.

In a "realistic workload", probably not. But you could certainly put your email client in offline mode, queue up a few thousand emails with big attachments, and then send them all at once. Presto: you're now using up as much bandwidth as you possibly can, at least until the queue is emptied.

The difference is that it's exceedingly rare--virtually impossible even!--for someone to use up as much bandwidth as they regularly do using BitTorrent/P2P. Thus, the ISPs target the most popular p2p algorithm, bittorrent.

Yes, but that's a stupid way to deal with excessive bandwidth use. It's like looking at heavy traffic on the roads to and from the beach, and deciding to "solve" the traffic problem by closing the beach.

It's stupid for a few reasons. One reason is that it puts the cart before the horse: the network is there to serve users, not the other way around. The public works department needs to adapt to the fact that drivers want to go to the beach, and ISPs need to adapt to the fact that their customers want to share files.

Another reason is that it's just not a very effective solution. Filtering one specific application is more difficult and costly than imposing an overall bandwidth cap, and it sets off an arms race as new versions of the application evade the filters, and new versions of the filters detect the application again. And if the filter ever becomes 100% effective against one application, people will just switch to another one, starting the whole cycle over.

If people are using too much bandwidth, then restrict their bandwidth usage or charge them for it. It's just that simple. The only reason ISPs are wasting their time with these filters is so they can keep advertising an impossibly high level of service, knowing that none of their customers will actually be able to use it.

Re:ISP

[Moridineas (213502)]

No, they are A) enforcing an UNPUBLISHED bandwidth cap,

What ISPs have unpublished bandwidth caps? As I noted in a previous post, I ran into some throttling with Cox, but that was their policy after talking to them. Who are the tricky ones to avoid?

and B) discriminating against a particular protocol instead of considering bandwidth alone.

I'm not sure I really see the distinction? Assuming (and it IS an assumption) that the ISPs reserve the right to throttle or cap, what does it matter if its one protocol or the whole connection? Heck, I'd RATHER it be one protocol, so if I exceed my bittorrent allotment, at least web/email/etc are still snappy.

Or am I misunderstanding what we're talking about ...?

Article Summary

[complete loony (663508)]

Detecting throttling;

• Download something popular
• Call your ISP
• Read their terms of service
• Glasnost [mpi-sws.mpg.de]
• pcapdiff [eff.org]
• Vuze plugin.

Avoiding throttling;

• Enable protocol encryption.
• Change the port number to something other than 6881.
• Tunnel through TOR or some other commercial VPN.

To which I would add, if you know your ISP is injecting fake RST's filter them out with a firewall rule. A little more complex a task than the expected audience of TFA though.

Re:Article Summary

[pwizard2 (920421)]

Tunnel through TOR

Part of the reason why Tor is so slow is because people are tunneling downloads through it, which kind of ruins it for everyone else.

Re:Article Summary

[FishWithAHammer (957772)]

Tunneling through Tor is a really shitty thing to do; it's not made to facilitate your downloading, and you put undue stress on people who are running Tor nodes for you.

In lieu of uploading....

[awarrenfells (1289658)]

While it does defeat the purpose of file sharing to a degree, but I have found that ISP's can only really detect file sharing through your upload to download ratio. I work for an $ISP, and we red flag accounts with an upload equal to or greater than their download, which sucks for some customers who upload large amounts of information to other servers or sites. I don't agree with it, but I have to pay the bills :P

Re:not me

[UncleTogie (1004853)]

now if i started running a bittorrent client all the time i would imagine my ISP would throttle my connection back severely and i could understand why...

So if your car manufacturer kept track of how many miles you'd driven, then limited either the speed or distance you can travel, would THAT be OK?

I'm sick of the "now you can download movies and music" commercials that say you can do these things, but don't mention limits other than POSSIBLY in fine print... at the bottom of the screen... in a 2-second flash... in the middle of a paragraph.

Either sell the service and back it, or don't bother. Sticking it to the customers 'cause you oversold your bandwidth is about as obnoxious as it gets without bein' illegal.

Re:not me

[rabbit994 (686936)]

It's not car manufacturers, it's more like taxing someone who spends more time on roads then someone else, which is something we do already with Fuel Taxes and Road taxes against Semis.

I agree with throttling, I just wish they would be upfront about it. If they have bandwidth limit, then state it. If they block certain protocols, say so.

Re:not me

[complete loony (663508)]

For those ISP's with periodic bandwidth caps, there's already a firefox extension called Net Usage [iau5.com].

Re:I feel very sorry...

[Darkness404 (1287218)]

So, what are you implying? That those who pay for a high-speed connection to the Internet shouldn't have rights to the high-speed part of it? So you are saying because I pay $XX per month to get unlimited access to the Internet at a speed of say ~1.5 MB/Second I have no right to demand use of that unlimited connection? I don't get what you are implying here, it seems like you are saying that what you pay for you have no right to use.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

He's implying that anyone clueless enough to think they can get "unlimited access to the internet" for a measly ~$40/month deserves to get burned. People that dumb are the ones responsible for the subprime mess.

Re:I feel very sorry...

[bluefoxlucid (723572)]

Uh, it's more like you purchase said item at the stated price and they bill your card and give you something crappy with a picture stapled to it.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you'll shutup when they come for your 3rd party VOIP.