Wednesday, February 20th 2008

BitTorrent Developers Find Ways to Circumvent ISP Blocking Measures

TorrentFreak summed up the gist of this story in a short paragraph.
Several BitTorrent developers have joined forces to propose a new protocol extension with the ability to bypass the BitTorrent interfering techniques used by Comcast and other ISPs. This new form of encryption will be implemented in BitTorrent clients including uTorrent, so Comcast subscribers are free to share again.
Basically, ISPs like Comcast block piracy by banning the extensions BitTorrent trackers use. BitTorrent clients are currently adapting to a new file extension, so that Comcast subscribers are once again free to download and share whatever they please freely. Please check the source link for a more detailed description of how the crack worked. TechPowerUp! does not condone piracy.
Source: TorrentFreak
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32 Comments on BitTorrent Developers Find Ways to Circumvent ISP Blocking Measures

#1
hv43082
The people have spoken...and they want to be able to freely share files! Screw Comcast, hope AT&T fiber optic coming soon to Miami.
Posted on Reply
#2
WarEagleAU
Bird of Prey
Haha, we will be free!
Posted on Reply
#3
tiys
Y'all know pirating is illegal? Comcast did that for a reason..what the reason was, I do not know.
Posted on Reply
#4
PVTCaboose1337
Graphical Hacker
What happens if my favorite Linux distributions use torrent files. Lawsuit time.
Posted on Reply
#6
tiys
@ PVTCaboose1337- Unless it's a legal torrent, I do understand, but I think they blocked torrents because of the p1rates...Yarr matey!
Posted on Reply
#7
panchoman
Sold my stars!
tiysY'all know pirating is illegal? Comcast did that for a reason..what the reason was, I do not know.
but bittorrent is not.

many linux companies rely heavily on the use of torrents to relay their linux distributions quickly and freely to thousands of people each day.

many small artists and companies also upload their work there to gain recognition

etc.
Posted on Reply
#8
tiys
As I've just stated, They probably did that because of the p1rates
Posted on Reply
#9
panchoman
Sold my stars!
alright so? theres pirating on the internet, pirating everywhere.. many websites with pirated software.. they dont get blocked..
Posted on Reply
#10
tiys
that's because theres too many sites...
Posted on Reply
#11
Disparia
I always go for the torrent option if a site offers it - linux distros, game demos, movie trailers, or some of my favorite music.

If they want to hit pirates - hit pirates, not torrents.
Posted on Reply
#12
PVTCaboose1337
Graphical Hacker
tiys@ PVTCaboose1337- Unless it's a legal torrent, I do understand, but I think they blocked torrents because of the p1rates...Yarr matey!
I know... I download LOADS of LEGAL linux torrents... I have about 20 linux torrents I keep around on my computer. I know about the illegal torrents... and the pirates.
Posted on Reply
#13
tiys
Too bad the pirates had to ruin the internet....

We legal downloaders have to suffer because of this..
Posted on Reply
#14
PVTCaboose1337
Graphical Hacker
How do you know I'm not a pirate?

dun dun dun dun dun dun dun
Posted on Reply
#15
panchoman
Sold my stars!
JizzlerI always go for the torrent option if a site offers it - linux distros, game demos, movie trailers, or some of my favorite music.

If they want to hit pirates - hit pirates, not torrents.
+1

also, tiys.. why not hit those big piracy websites and ebay sellers that sell pirated goods first before targeting billions of users for using bittorrent.. whether it was legally or illegally

plus if you wanna get your music "legally" through major websites.. theres an easy way to do that too.. but i'll let it be my little secret lol.
Posted on Reply
#16
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
and heres my take:

P2P is full of pirates. Oh lets block that.

OMG now all the pirates use HTTP! lets block that too!

and now the internet is gone... and the ISP's make lots more money!
Posted on Reply
#17
candle_86
its at the end of the golden age yall, what do you expect. In 20 years time everything will be blocked somehow.
Posted on Reply
#18
ChillyMyst
tiysY'all know pirating is illegal? Comcast did that for a reason..what the reason was, I do not know.
it is :O i had no idea!!!!! *looks at his 400gb worth of downloads in shock* :P

comcast did it because it saves them bandwith and bandwith costs them $ its nothing to do with stoping piracy they dont block rappidshit or megaupload or the like.

here comcast dostn got that filtering on because to many WoW users went postal when their updates where gonna take 14+hrs to download(small updates 200mb range)

they called blizzard, blizzard called comcast and bam, back in buisness!!!
Posted on Reply
#19
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
ChillyMystit is :O i had no idea!!!!! *looks at his 400gb worth of downloads in shock* :P

comcast did it because it saves them bandwith and bandwith costs them $ its nothing to do with stoping piracy they dont block rappidshit or megaupload or the like.

here comcast dostn got that filtering on because to many WoW users went postal when their updates where gonna take 14+hrs to download(small updates 200mb range)

they called blizzard, blizzard called comcast and bam, back in buisness!!!
The very simple fact is this: ISP's sell themselves over and over.

Lets say you have 100MB/s bandwidth (this is tiny, its an EXAMPLE) and you sell 10MB/s internet.

Thats only 10 users! omg!

But wait - most of them are only at 5% capacity most of the time (email, chat) spiking to 25% (gaming, brief downloads)

So, lets increase it to 25 people at 4Mb/s - no one gets their full speed at peak times, but 'most of the time' they get their full speed and its 'reasonable' on peak.

Thing with torrenting is, that its so easy to get resumable downloads of gigantic size - rather than 25% being the peak, its now 50% and they're running short... so its increase bandwidth (and costs) or just block this nuisance and let 'normal' people use 'normal' amounts of bandwidth.
Posted on Reply
#20
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
Well pirating stuff isn't the only thing that can be achieved using bit-torrents, a lot of other things can which are bearing the brunt of pseudo-fascist ISPs. I used to share family videos and likes with my people in the US (who are subscribers of that Comcast 6Mbps thingy) using bit-torrent, a lot of users such as artists offer their works on BT, so are legal downloads of Linux distributions such as Fedora and OpenSuSE to name a few, use BT for distributing their software legally because it's expensive for them to run HTTP servers with that high bandwidth considering they offer ~4 GB .iso files and so they rely heavily on the bit-torrent seeds, peers etc., goes on to show some ISP's are just being pseudo-fascist. On the other hand, each time I download say a Linux distro or anything for that matter, I first look whether the download is offered as a torrent, they run faster on my connection ;)

If I'm not mistaken, Aletis was already working on a workaround for its Azureus client.
Posted on Reply
#21
candle_86
yea SBC before it was AT&T limited my bandwith for awhile, got a letter saying i was using nearly 100gigs a month of bandwith on there network.
Posted on Reply
#22
driver66
Ok guys lets not make the mistake of saying all "we" download are linux distros and such :laugh: That is laughable !!! 99.999999% of ALL torrents are pirated content....And I am 1 of them ,,,no denying here:toast: But all this hoopla about "linux distro's" is :roll:
Posted on Reply
#23
Mussels
Freshwater Moderator
driver66Ok guys lets not make the mistake of saying all "we" download are linux distros and such :laugh: That is laughable !!! 99.999999% of ALL torrents are pirated content....And I am 1 of them ,,,no denying here:toast: But all this hoopla about "linux distro's" is :roll:
Linux, music, WoW - three LEGAL ways to download. Its just like banning HTTP and web browsing because pirating is there too - as long as some of its used for legal purposes, they cant stop it.

I also download lots of anime that is legal for ME, but not for the USA - its legal to download until its licensed in your country. Naruto for example, is 7+ seasons in - in the USA they're on the first season, and in aus we got nada. So i can download it, until its available to buy - which is when i WILL buy it.
Posted on Reply
#24
ChillyMyst
MusselsThe very simple fact is this: ISP's sell themselves over and over.

Lets say you have 100MB/s bandwidth (this is tiny, its an EXAMPLE) and you sell 10MB/s internet.

Thats only 10 users! omg!

But wait - most of them are only at 5% capacity most of the time (email, chat) spiking to 25% (gaming, brief downloads)

So, lets increase it to 25 people at 4Mb/s - no one gets their full speed at peak times, but 'most of the time' they get their full speed and its 'reasonable' on peak.

Thing with torrenting is, that its so easy to get resumable downloads of gigantic size - rather than 25% being the peak, its now 50% and they're running short... so its increase bandwidth (and costs) or just block this nuisance and let 'normal' people use 'normal' amounts of bandwidth.
and thats the problem, they oversell, not that people are using what they pay for, here in the states internet isnt limmited to 20-40-60gb a month on most supplyers they sell UNLIMITED and they sell 4-8mbit connections then they throttle your speed if you use torrents, including the blizzard updated thats just a torrent client, hence they get ALOT of bitching from NORMAL users who have to spend 14hrs to get an update so they can play their game, the update being 230mb or less in most cases, i saw one guy, he had to have somebody cut the updated into 9mb files and email them to him one at a time because his isp had throttled ALL torrent traffic down to the level of 14.4 modem users, it was gonna take him days to get an update........thats really stupid of them, oh but they didnt limmit his email download speed or rapid share(rs didnt work for the update because it still needed cut to be uploaded to a free account....)

in the end a few gaming sites started putting the updates on for direct download, but they arent exectly easy to find, u gotta know where to look and on what site, this isnt something most wow MORONS can deal with, they can barly deal with playing the game let alone manulay updating it.
btarunrWell pirating stuff isn't the only thing that can be achieved using bit-torrents, a lot of other things can which are bearing the brunt of pseudo-fascist ISPs. I used to share family videos and likes with my people in the US (who are subscribers of that Comcast 6Mbps thingy) using bit-torrent, a lot of users such as artists offer their works on BT, so are legal downloads of Linux distributions such as Fedora and OpenSuSE to name a few, use BT for distributing their software legally because it's expensive for them to run HTTP servers with that high bandwidth considering they offer ~4 GB .iso files and so they rely heavily on the bit-torrent seeds, peers etc., goes on to show some ISP's are just being pseudo-fascist. On the other hand, each time I download say a Linux distro or anything for that matter, I first look whether the download is offered as a torrent, they run faster on my connection ;)

If I'm not mistaken, Aletis was already working on a workaround for its Azureus client.
as stated above, blizzards WoW and some other games are now using torrent based updaters these get throttled so bad that people can be down for 1-2 days not being able to play beacuse the ISP is HEAVLY throttling them with that sandavene (whatever) software service, this is BULLSHIT, and it stoped around here according to the comcast guy who installed my cable the last time, all because users bitched to blizzard, and comcast then blizzard called comcast up here and effectivly told them that if it wasnt stoped they would be reccomending all wow players drop comcast in favor of DSL and other services, insome cases isp's limmit the download speed so baddly that you would get the updates faster over 56k......that is insain........
Posted on Reply
#25
ChillyMyst
candle_86yea SBC before it was AT&T limited my bandwith for awhile, got a letter saying i was using nearly 100gigs a month of bandwith on there network.
lol, i know a bunch of ppl who have gotten letters like that, and i have relitives who got that "unlimmited" verizion wireless bb service then got termenated because they downloaded over 5gb a month!!!

yes 5gb, aint that bs....i can do that in a few hours or less just watching youtube constantly :)
Posted on Reply
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