torrentfreak.com — 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.
Feb 15, 2008 View in Crawl 4
sa007Feb 16, 2008
It's pretty much impossible to block torrents...Blocking them is not the solution at all.
mtheoryxFeb 16, 2008
Maybe he's just using a simplified hi-lo method.
b0rgFeb 16, 2008
Two different issues here, I think. I think you're talking about "net neutrality". I can take either side of that argument, but do you really want folks like Tom DeLay involved in managing what you can and can't access? The staff at EFF is cool and everything, but they don't get weekly conference calls with the white house; Pat Robertson does.The subject I was addressing is probably closer to "application neutrality", and goes to the question of, should an ISP be allowed to throttle one application to give preference to another? If it's my torrent, clearly the answer is no. if it's my WoW epic raid that times out due to your torrent, then of course the answer is yes."upgrade the infrastructure" is an iffy suggestion. I own circuits where I have guaranteed end-to-end bandwidth, but they're hard to get below $40/mb/mo, whereas a typical 8/768 cable connection is more like $7/mb/mo. (yes, I know, the upload - but rememeber, to 90% of the subs, they never hit that limit). And the very nature of p2p protocols is they locate any bandwidth and consume it until it degrades in performance. I've added two OC48's in a single night to a major city, and watched as they quickly hit the same usage levels as the existing transit connections, doing little for the customers, nothing for my income, but adding $160,000/mo to my expenses and ... whatever a couple OC48 SM PIC's cost at the time. Probably $16,000 give or take.
vektuzFeb 17, 2008
This seems pretty vulnerable still, looking at the specifications for it.Basically, they make it so that bittorrent clients can (optionally) ask the tracker for an encrypted peer list. That's great. Unfortuantely, its optional.Scenario: You have a new version of a bittorrent client that uses this encryption. Your friend down the hall doesn't. Everytime you ask for a peer list from the tracker, it responds opaquely, and the sandvine router you are both behind can't do anything. But then your friend's bittorrent client, which is old, asks for a peer list in plain text. Whoops. The sandvine router, of course, sees it. And it includes your and his ip. And the ip's of other clients. The moment it sees either you or him connect to any of those ips on their listening ports, it knows its a bittorrent connection, and sents a RST. Game over!So basically this plan will only work when they can get every user in the world to upgrade their bittorrent clients. Which is never. Some people still use the original gnutella (thats not even bittorrent, I know. Its just an example of how people, once they get something working, dont bother to upgrade it... ever...)Of course, if they somehow manage to get everyone to upgrade, the sandvine router itself could, of course, ask the tracker for the peer list in plaintext...
vektuzFeb 17, 2008
It works by peer obfuscation. Currently, sandvine works by seeing peer-lists being sent by trackers to clients. (Via the sandvine router). It then monitors peers for connections on the given ports and ips to confirm a bittorrent connection, and then sends each side a RST.If you obfuscate this peer list in such a way that it can only be decoded by the endpoints, and not the router lurking in the middle, it wont be able to determine between bittorrent connections and other connections.
linkdjFeb 18, 2008
Pfft. Lucky.
spenderbenderFeb 20, 2008
For TV torrents <a class="user" href="http://www.spotep.com/spotted">http://www.spotep.com/spotted</a> is great, which combines a TV schedule with direct links to torrent searches !