Thread: How To Encrypt BitTorrent Traffic

More and more ISP’s are limiting and throttling BitTorrent traffic on their networks. By throttling BitTorrent traffic the speed of BitTorrent downloads decrease, and high speed downloads are out of the question.

What does encryption Do?
The RC4 encryption obfuscates not only the header but the entire stream. This means that it’s very hard for your ISP to detect that the traffic you are generating comes from BitTorrent.
Note that RC4 uses more CPU time than the plain encryption or no encryption. It is however harder to identify for traffic shaping devices


How can I do this?
This is different for all clients; check the setting for your favorite client below.






Azureus


1. Go to: Tools > Options > Connection > Transport Encryption
2. Check the ‘require encrypted transport’ box.
3. Choose RC4 in the ‘minimum encryption’ dropdown box
note that RC4 uses more CPU time than the plain encryption or no encryption. It is however harder to identify for traffic shaping devices
4. You can choose to tick the ‘Allow non-encrypted outgoing connections if encrypted connection attempt fails’ box. This will ensure compatibility with clients that are not using encryption. However, it makes it easier for your ISP to detect BitTorrent traffic. I recommend that you try to tick this box first. If you are still not getting proper speeds untick it
5. Tick the ‘Allow non-encrypted incoming connections’ box

That’s it, your BitTorrent traffic is encrypted now.


uTorrent


1. Go to: Options > Preferences > BitTorrent
2. Go to ‘Protocol encryption’, you can choose between ‘enabled’ and ‘forced’. ‘Enabled’ will give you more connections but offers less protection against traffic shapers.
I would recommend to try ‘enabled’ first, if that doesn’t increase your speeds you need to swich to ‘forced’.
3. Ticking ‘Allow legacy incoming connections’ allows non ecrypted clients to connect to you. This improves compatibility between clients but makes you more vulnerable to traffic shapers.
I would recommend to tick this box, but if that doesn’t increase your speeds, untick it!



That’s it, your BitTorrent traffic is encrypted now.
Good luck and happy torrenting


http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-encry...rrent-traffic/

Thanx for the tutorial VectorKing. I have a question though; doesn't enabling encryption have an adverse affect on speed?

Originally Posted by diridawa

Thanx for the tutorial VectorKing. I have a question though; doesn't enabling encryption have an adverse affect on speed?

If you think about it, it may actually increase your speed, as many seeders will have the option enabled to BLOCK you if you DON'T have encryption enabled.
I use "Forced" without allowing legacy connections in uTorrent and have encountered no problems whatsoever.

Thanks. I just enabled my encryption. I'm not sure how it will effect my speeds. Hopefully not too drastically. I will keep an eye on it to find out.

^^
Good work there Vectorking..... noobs will really benefit from this...

One more thing, on encrytion you become more secured from getting caught for using p2p data transfer of illegal contents!!!

And obviously it makes you more connectable to other peers, giving you better download/upload speed!!

i've been using utorrent with forced encryption/no legacy options for ages and haven't had a slowdown yet. If we all encrypt then the transfer speeds will remain the same, just needs a little more cpu for the encryption. like Nine said, if you DONT enable encryption you will not be able to connect to those that require it which might be lowering your speeds and affecting your seeding

Thanks! Great advice, my ISP is going to be on my ass for torrenting sooner or later so might as well swing a fist back at 'em.

Man you seem living in horror of getting captured sharing illegal content. I would take my chances & spare extra clock rate for extra apps other than Bit-Torrent ones.

Alright - so if your speeds are already fine, there's no reason to mess with this? Though if you happen to notice that one day your torrents are all crawling, it could be a potential fix?