August 19, 2008 by sharky
For students, September can be a very stressful time of year - saying goodbye to loved-ones, readjusting to an academic schedule, and the loss of carefree BitTorrent downloading due to an iron-fisted university ISP. While we can’t help you with the first two - at least you’ll be able to keep the torrents rolling into your dorm room by implementing a few of these tips.
Many universities are getting wise to the increasing BitTorrent/P2P traffic that’s clogging up their lines, not to mention the headaches of having to deal with "Copyright Infringement / DMCA" notices to pass along to students. More and more are now using outsourced unfriendly ISP’s that outright ban BitTorrent/P2P traffic, and even FTP access is beginning to join the banlist. If you picked up some nice private trackers over the summer, you’ll have a difficult time keeping active accounts when you can’t download (or seed) torrents.
Here’s how to keep it all in sync:
Tip #1 — Get A Seedbox
Without uncertainty, a seedbox is Number One on the list when it comes to bypassing a restrictive university ISP. Access to your seedbox (GUI) is through unblocked HTTP, and since there’s no torrent client (µtorrent) running on your dorm PC, there’s no need to configure a firewall & router.
You won’t require a $100-a-month dedicated server as a seedbox - that’s a lot of beer money. Even with a $10 or $20/monthly plan from a TorrentFlux or µTorrent WebUI seedbox provider, not only can you do a respectable amount of downloading to your dormroom PC, but you’ll be able to sustain that great sharing ratio you’ve been building up. Nearly all TFlux/WebUI providers now offer free FTP and/or HTTP downloading back to your PC (without any incurred costs against the bandwidth limits of the account). Your BitTorrent traffic will slip right through unnoticed - your school will be none the wiser.
Our Notes: Some universities are actively able to block (restrict) normal FTP connections. The alternative is to use a seedbox host that offers SFTP / SSH as an option for downloading back to your PC - one such provider is seedboxhosting.com. Others do exist, although if regular FTP transferring seems a problem, simply download finished torrents through HTTP.
Tip #2 — Use a VPN Service
Tunneling over your university’s Internet traffic through a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service is a good alternative to a seedbox. While this may not boast the same advantages that a 100 Mbit seedbox can provide to your private trackers (such as ratio buffering), a VPN will hide ALL of your traffic.
Our Note: Not much can compete with the bandwidth of a proper 100 Mbit seedbox. It should also be mentioned that a BitTorrent client will also be required for BT transfers on the dorm PC (such as µTorrent) that needs to be tunneled through the VPN, as opposed to a rented TFlux/WebUI seedbox which incorporates a BT client on a secondary ’seedbox’ PC that is accessible though an HTTP login.
Warning: There’s been some mention that the IP ranges that Relakks is using has now been put on a ‘banlist’ of VPN providers that some universities may be blocking.
Tip #3 — Park Your Account
If money is tight, or a seedbox / VPN doesn’t fit the solution, you may also have an option to "park" your private tracker account. ‘Parking’ means you’ll be unable to access the tracker (i.e. no torrents) - but the account on the site will still be active whereby you cannot be disabled due to inactivity. While not all trackers allow for parking, many do (What.cd does not, while Waffles.fm does). The allowable ‘parked’ time varies from one tracker to the next.
Tip #4 — Unblock Torrent Files
I’m not sure about university ISPs, but my work ISP doesn’t allow for *.torrent file downloads. I can access my private trackers from work, but torrent files won’t download to the hard drive.
One workaround for this is use txtor - a service where you can save a *.torrent file as a *.txt file to your hard drive - then rename it back to *.torrent, and load it up in your BT client. Works marvelously - read more about it here:
— how-to-download-torrents-through-a-proxyfirewall
Tip #5 - Use an HTTPS Tracker
Using an HTTPS [https://] tracker can help to outwit your throttling/traffic shaping ISP. Some of the larger private trackers incorporate https as an option in the tracker. They include (but are not limited to):
- • Waffles.fm
- • TorrentBytes.net
- • HDBits.org
- • RevolutionTT.net
An HTTPS tracker should not be confused with a torrent site that works over SSL. ThePirateBay, Isohunt and others offer HTTPS browsing, but the trackers in the torrent itself are still regular HTTP, and not secure whatsoever.
If all else fails - quit school — The future is BitTorrent!
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