Bittorrent unusable during daylight hours :(

[stormy]

I think the image tells the tale, garbage, throttled to death... Taken a few mins ago..

[Switchace]

What client are you using?
Have you enabled encryption?
Sure it's not a lack of seeds/peers?

[stormy]

No its not lack of seeds, utorrent, encryption makes no difference (I have tried it disabled, forced and enabled) there was a big discussion about it on the adslguide forums.

Ah well, there was a time when I would get 100-200kb/s on peak and full rate off peak, I was happy with that but now I am lucky to get 50kb/s on peak.

[ako]

Yea same here mate.... between 6pm and 12pm and all weekends i dont get over 20kbs on any torrent, any other times i get upto 600kbs. It didn't used to be that bad on the peak times, these past few months its gone real shite.

KarooMax option 1

[tomsutherland]

Hi,

I have never used Bit Torrent but am interested in doing so. I have heard stories of people (always a friend of a friend of a friend, repeat as necessary) having their broadband connections terminated as a result of downloading content which is subject to copyright laws i.e. music, films, software etc.

Can Karoo tell the content of a torrent and disable your connection?

[Fastethernet]

Hi Tom,

It's not Karoo that's fused about copyright issues, it's the copyright holders who could identify your IP and request that Karoo close your account or maybe even sue you. The Bit Torrent protocol could be used for all sorts of file sharing, many Linux distros are shared via Bit Torrent to save on server bandwidth. Bit Torrent clients tend to support encryption which would stop anyone from peeking inside your packets and finding out which files you are sharing.

Disclaimer

Karooforums.net does not condone or support the breaking of copyright law.

[marko]

They usually go after people sharing files rather than the people downloading. If you want to download copyrighted stuff. Turn off all sharing facilities. It's not a full proof way of staying safe but it does put you way down the list when they're chasing up people breaking the copyright laws.

Use a program like Peerguardian to help stop the copyright holders seeing your ip. Its not full proof but it helps.

It is one area where Karoo seem pretty fair (to their customers anyway). They tend to close your account when they get hassled by copyright holders rather than pass your details on. You then have to agree to stop being naughty and they activate your account again.

marko...

 

[tomsutherland]

Ah I see, do you know how I can check what software shields the contents of the packets? I have downloaded the software from the official Bit Torrent website but have not used it yet. I am using Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).

I was also concerned that Karoo might be able to see outbound traffic to websites they know to supply illegal content i.e. The Pirate Bay. Is this something I need to worry about?

Can I just double check to make sure I have understood correctly: There is nothing wrong with downloading a torrent as they are not intrinsically illegal. It is the content of the torrent that counts, however, if the content is shielded there is no way of knowing what is being downloaded. Karoo may implement performance management on my line which restricts the bandwidth of torrent traffic but no other?

Please can someone confirm that I have understood this?

Many Thanks,
Tom.

[Fastethernet]

Hi Tom,

I personally use Azureus which does support encryption, you can download the OSX version from here http://azureus.sourceforge.net/download.php?os=1

A torrent file itself is not illegal as it contains no copyrighted material. However if you download and/or share copyrighted material you are breaking the law! Beware.

Karoo can and do traffic shape most traffic during peak hours, this includes the Bit Torrent protocol and various other peer-to-peer protocols. Only HTTP and SSL seem to escape the traffic shaping.

There is plenty of information out there about Bit Torrent, if you want to know more try reading this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_%28protocol%29

Disclaimer

Karooforums.net does not condone or support the breaking of copyright law.

[stormy]

If you don't want people knowing what you are downloading, stick to private trackers too. Don't use public ones.

Mike

[dylan]

I'm not 100% sure that using an encrypted connection would actually protect you from discovery whilst downloading illegal material via bittorent.

When file sharing using the bittorent protocol you are connected to a 'swarm' of other computers. To transfer data over the swarm, any computer that you are uploading to - or - downloading from needs your IP address.

Private enforcement agencies acting on behalf of copyright holders can easily seed copyrighted material and collect your IP when you connect to them to download it. They can also join a swarm and note the IP addresses connecting to them during a filesharing session.

Encryption wouldn't hide your IP address from the swarm. I think it's more useful to protect you from your ISP's bandwidth shaping.

Protecting your anonymity whilst on line can be done in a variety of other ways though. I've been thinking of writing a post here about it here actually! For the moment check out Peerguardian but remember, the only way to stay safe is to stay within the law. 

Disclaimer: Karooforums.net does not condone or support the breaking of copyright law.

[Fr34ky]

i use newsgroups and am hidden as i pay extra a month for encyption, done it this way for over 2 yrs and never had any problems.

Day time i dont use it as according to karoo you can only download between hours of midnight and 7am i think, although they do allow you a 1gb window in peak time.

I usually download between the hours of 5am and 8am were i get a speed of 6.5-7mb a sec so everything downloads in no time.

When i have tried on a daytime i get about 100kb a sec