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."

Re:Australia is lucky

[QuantumG]

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.

The basic problem here is ...

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Protest

[Pig Hogger]

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

Re:I feel very sorry...

[Darkness404]

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:The basic problem here is ...

[grommit]

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:I feel very sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:I feel very sorry...

[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:Australia is lucky

[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

[iminplaya]

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:not me

[rabbit994]

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:Anti-trust?

[compro01]

that of course assumes that there is another company that doesn't throttle that you can switch to. without healthy competition, it simply won't work in that manner.

Don't elude...get a different ISP

[ucblockhead]

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:The basic problem here is ...

[Darkness404]

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.

ISP

[codepunk]

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]

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:not me

[Ichijo]

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?

They basically do that with their x-ty thousand miles warranties.

Re:The basic problem here is ...

[Tawnos]

And all slashdotters like you seem to want is validation of your own rants against society. If you're so unhappy with all the stuff you see online, get outside and talk a walk. You'll feel better.

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

[bagboy]

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.

Re:Australia is lucky

[Maxo-Texas]

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.

Re:Copyright Free Content?

[EzInKy]

I think they meant things like Linux -- which is, of course, copy-written. The whole Free Software movement hinges on Copyright (Left?). So, presumably, they just meant crap like music and movies that someone is going to bitch about you copying as being copy-written.

It was a stupid remark on their part, I agree - but I think their intent was obvious.


Obvious or not it is still important to point out such errors because the RIAA/MPAA/BSA all want to create the illusion that it is illegal to share anything that is copyrighted.

 

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:ISP

[Moridineas]

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.

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. BitTorrent does manage to EASILY complete max out your upload and download speeds. Don't forget that many bittorrent clients automatically (by default!) adjust their upload and download rates to maximize their rates, and maximize their bandwidth usage.

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.

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. Look it's not just techies and good network citizens who run bittorrent--idiots too do too!

You say companies should charge for bandwidth usage or lower their caps--isn't that what many companies are doing when they throttle bittorrent?

Re:Australia is lucky

[trawg]

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

I shall have to assume you're an American, because trying to score points off such a triviality as that while your own political system is rogering you every which way would be exactly the sort of thing I'd expect from one. We might not have laser pointers (note: that whole debacle was in one state, and it was only for laser pointers up to a certain level of dangerousness, and noone here even gives a shit about it anyway because we don't see the need to own laser pointers), but I'm glad we're not in the same spiraling descent into hell you guys are currently in.

If you're not American, then take the bits you want out of the above and consider me trolled.

Re:ISP

[Mr2001]

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.

Canada is basically monopolized too

[tentimestwenty]

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.

Re:The basic problem here is ...

[jamstar7]

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

Canada too

[phorm]

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.

Re:I feel very sorry...

[houstonbofh]

The number of legal users who end up in the top X% of their ISPs' resource expenditure graphs is so small as to be insignificant.

Unless you are one of them. Then it gets very significant, very fast.

Re:Australia is lucky

[rossz]

Some of us care. Unfortunately, we seem to be a small minority. The typical American is happy to sit at home being spoon fed his/her weekly episode of "American Idol" and trade email chain letters that are the online equivalent of the National Equirer (think big foot, Elvis sightings, and UFOs).

Re:ISP

[Moridineas]

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 ...?

Re:In lieu of uploading....

[freedumb2000]

That sounds like it would track only private tracker users at best and have lots of false positives.

Best sign of victory...

[Kjella]

...is that computer magazines run articles like this anyway. I doubt they'd post an article that's more or less "How-to warez more effectively!!!1", torrenting is something a lot of people do. The pirate bay is around top 100 on the alexia webranking, and if you start reading the next 100 maybe you'll realize just how big that is. It's higher than IGN, NBA, Digg, 2ch, SourceForge, CNET, mozilla, amazon.de (not com!) and so on. Other prominent sites like IsoHunt (124), torrentz.com (157) also rate very highly. That's way beyond a few hogs they want to get rid of, saying "WTF I can't use torrents" is almost up there with "WTF I can't watch YouTube" or "WTF I can't run MSN". They'll be killing themselves if they keep this up...

Re:Australia is lucky

[syousef]

The law was against having them with no legitimate use.. if you have a legitimate use then there's no law against having them. You'd know this if you had read anything about the law in question and you would have read something about it if you cared, so clearly you don't.

I've read plenty about the law you arrogant fool. I just happen not to be naive and stupid enough to trust a NSW cop to recognise a legitimate use, nor a judge to be suitably informed to try a case. How many NSW cops and judges do you know that are into astronomy. How do you tell the difference between an amateur astronomer with a pair of binocs and a laser pointer, and a dickhead who is using the same equipment to "shoot down" planes.

And this tripe gets modded informative. Slashdot has gone to the dogs.

Re:Australia is lucky

[ryszard99]

IANAL + IMHO, sitting in a cafe with friends mucking about with a green laser pointer (one of the "high power" jobbies is not a legit use of a laser pointer.

However using one for astronomy, sitting in a room doing whatever you need to do with it (IANAA - Astronomer) probably is. I would wager that most cops would be able to tell the difference here./P

Re:not me

[fugue]

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?

Of course. Using a car destroys non-renewable resources, causes air pollution, noise pollution, light pollution at night, is a direct kinetic danger to cyclists, pedestrians, and even other car users (not to mention the harm it does the driver), is the direct cause of urban sprawl and the untenability of walking cities... But it seems that leaving a car manufacturer the responsibility of safeguarding common resources is unlikely to be successful.

Re:Australia is lucky

[1u3hr]

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'.

Well, it IS easier to ban a gadget than "outlaw stupid". Look at the US which tried the "outlaw stupidity" method with regrds to gun control. Isn't working very effectively, IMHO. Most other contries just outlawed the gadget rather trying to make people smarter, laudable though that is in abstract.

Re:Protest

[Insightfill]

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:Australia is lucky

[Dishevel]

Owning a device frequently used to endanger aircraft ! Why on earth should that be illegal?

You sir are so correct. Would you minding helping with passing a law to ban the possesion of hands? Hands are used by almost EVERY criminal. Hands are used in theft, battery, rape and even MURDER! Please help ban these incredibly dangerous items from being able to just be owned by everyone.

Re:Switch ISP

[MarcoG42]

Feeding troll. Your car analogy sucks. Yes, if I bought a car that does 400 mph I should damn well be able to drive it that fast. There are tracks around the country where you can pay to drive as fast as you like. So, yes, that governor on the car I paid my money for is keeping me from enjoying what I paid for.

That's nice. You paid $5 for a, what?....15 year old movie? Some people would rather not pay $30 for a movie that just came out, though.

ISPs are obligated to deliver on their promises. If I get a cable internet connection that says it delivers speeds of 30 Mb/s down and / 5 Mb/s up and has unlimited data transfer and no restrictions that's damn well what I expect to get. I don't care if my downloading every piece of free software via bittorrent I can get my hands on is affecting other customers. That's not my problem, it's the ISPs. They need to upgrade their network, not interfere with the service I paid for.