torrents on school network?

hfoster · 09-04-2009, 01:58 PM

im using utorrent which is not allowed on the schools network, if they find you are using it, they will shut down your internet. is there any software i can use to disguise it? i have encryption forced, but any proxy software that i should be using?

also, what cap should i put on my download speed? i have it on 50 kb/s right now.

http://technology.ohio.edu/help/blocked-faq.html

http://technology.ohio.edu/p2p/

Lergnom · 09-04-2009, 08:55 PM

There is no way I'm going to help you with this and no one else should either because you're asking for how to violate school policies and perhaps the law.

hfoster · 09-05-2009, 10:41 AM

okay, thanks kimosabe

Topdog · 09-05-2009, 09:04 PM

If you want to torrent, do it at your house. Not at your school.

zapakovex · 09-06-2009, 11:57 AM

Or find some place with free wifi that doesn't block torrenting. It is NOT worth losing your university internet connection, let's grow up here.

DelfinoM · 09-06-2009, 03:21 PM

Well since it does have its perfectly legal uses as well. They probably just block the default port. Also Forced encryption would help as well, which would effectively make it very difficult to pickout the packets with torrent info, besides seeing a large amount of data flow to a single ip in the network. Also use peerguardian to block peers that are bad for you.

commentcomment · 09-07-2009, 01:12 AM

you should read about the Boston University student who forced his way and used torrent illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs and was hit with a 675k fine.

ab2013 · 09-07-2009, 11:15 AM

Don't use them. If you get caught, you're pretty much screwed for life.

afriedma · 09-08-2009, 03:13 PM

Beyond the nontrivial legal and moral issues, one of the biggest reasons that college networks get bogged down is student use of torrent sites for downloading.

You know, you can rent a DVD these days for $1. Try that instead.

hirako · 09-08-2009, 05:33 PM

You should either rent a seedbox or use newsgroups. Torrenting on campus is not safe, as the MAFIAA specifically looks for IP addresses that are part of college IP blocks, as universities buckle to threatening letters a lot easier than ISPs, and students generally don't have the resources necessary to fight back.

Also, there is the possibility that your university has a Dtella network, which allows students to easily share files over the university's local network. This form of file sharing is extremely fast and virtually impossible for the MAFIAA to detect, as all data transfers stay within the university's network.

willzzz88 · 09-20-2009, 11:41 PM

I'm not going to give any advice due to legal issues violating you're schools policies. Basically, there are methods as mentioned above (encryption) and if you research enough it will work. There are also other methods that do protocol encapsulation. Best way is this:
Torrent if it's legal, if it's questionable, do it off campus. Sounds like you're school is using a DPI (Deep Packet Inspection)/Protocol Analysis or similar device on their network. I'd be real careful and avoid it all together then... You DO know there's ways of getting stuff via HTTP right?

excelblue · 09-29-2009, 04:58 AM

Seems like they do monitoring via deep packet inspection.

In any case, university internet access is a previlege, not a right. It is an optional service provided to you on behalf of the university for your convenience. However, one of their terms is no torrents - so stick with it.

In fact, it's technically inappropriate to use university-provided internet for even stuff that aren't related to your studies (inc'l posting here). The problem with that, though, is that it's completely impractical. However, this isn't necessarily the case with torrents because they are extremely bandwidth intensive compared to "regular" internet usage, and usually have no place in an academic setting, legal or not.

With that in mind - you really should get your own connection. However, if you really insist, you can run an encrypted VPN tunnel by using one of those privacy services. Just remember - this is an extra cost, and albeit very unlikely, if you're caught, be ready to face the consequences.

greenwinnebago · 09-29-2009, 04:20 PM

Do people use DC++ on your campus? At Oregon State, Utorrent wasn't blocked, but people who used it too much would sometimes lose their internet privileges. People would use DC++ to share things within the network, which was constantly getting new content from a clique of geeks who used ultra-fast outside connections to download as much stuff as possible, then copy it onto a few computers (with 20-terabyte hard drives) that were hooked into the school's network. So anyway, yeah: check out DC++.

pyroza · 10-02-2009, 02:50 AM

1. Torrent at home and save to an external drive
2. Learn to use rapidshare, megaupload, etc.

arklogic · 10-15-2009, 04:37 PM

Check to see if you are limited to a certain bandwith. If not, don't worry about the download/upload cap. Encryption is a good first step. Never forget to load the ipblocklist via ipfilter manually in utorrent or use an automated program like peerguardian. Stay away from public torrents and use private trackers instead. Make sure you know the policy. Most of the time it's not torrenting that's illegal, it's torrenting copyrighted things that's illegal.