Thread: Torrenting at university

So I am going to be attending a university soon and I know torrenting there is near impossible and if you do it's guaranteed to be caught and in trouble. Is there a way to hide myself through a proxy or something while retaining a decent download /upload speed. Any suggestions? I honestly have no idea how to approach this. Thanks in advanced.

As you already seem to know, albeit trying to ignore.. using University access to the net is likely to have problems with port forwarding and if you download anything that has a copyright on it may well put your academic career in jeopardy. Is it really worth that risk?

The real answer is to get your own ISP account. A possible alternative to look into is a VPN provider. But look into that carefully to see if it will work with torrent clients and that it is permitted with the trackers that you intend to use. If you still feel reckless, then at least set your client to forced encryption. But you may still have problems with being connectible as your University will probably be actively trying to block torrents due to large bandwidth usage and copyright liability. Bear in mind that a lot of trackers will ban you if you use a proxy.

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Get a cheap seedbox and download the files through it
this may work

Nice.

That may be an elegant solution for the OP. Unless his University is unusually restrictive.. he should be able to use an encrypted connection on a non-standard port to d/l to his PC and be good to go.

I get what you're saying copper, but as a member to some private trackers, isn't it required to be somewhat active? I would only be home 5-6 times a year. However I do currently use a seedbox with 100 gigs, I was wondering if there was some way around though. I guess not, but thanks.

Yes, you do have to maintain a certain activity at private trackers to avoid an inactivity ban. The actual amount of time will vary from tracker to tracker. If you aren't using a tracker, you can extend this period by 'parking' your account.

As you say that you already have a seedbox.. I'm not sure what your question or concern is? I'm guessing that you were trying to reduce expense by giving up the seedbox? If you are keeping the seedbox, you should be able to manage it from university via an encrypted connection e.g. SSH and be as active as you like. Without a seedbox, I don't see anyway that you are likely to make this work other than purchasing a non-university ISP account or possibly a VPN account. Both of which would probably equal or exceed the cost of a seedbox.

So if I didn't miss something obvious or someone doesn't proffer a better suggestion.. then it comes down to paying for a cheap seedbox or not torrenting when at university. In the latter case perhaps you can park your tracker accounts and just login once in while from an off-campus account (friend, relatives, internet cafe, cellular browsing) to keep them active. 5 or 6 times a year for a parked account should be more than sufficient.

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I'm jumping to this thread as I don't want create a new one. Do you guys really think it would be okay to do some torrenting through the connection that your university gives you if it's a VPN connection. Not only that, but in my university they give access to a computer through SSH, even though the space might have been limited to 500MB I think the bandwidth is unlimited (shared with everyone) and overnight you could get really good speeds. Sometimes I can connect to that connection of my university from my home and with a can I could enhance the signal of my receiver. What I've managed to do is to have an IRC client connected to some trackers that give bonus points for idling there. Maybe I could install rTorrent on my space in that system, but I'm really worried to get caught.
Ideas? any precautions to take before trying?
The problem is that they got access to everyone's personal space, and they'll even delete files from people if they notice that they are using to much space. Also, if you connect to their network normally, you're always giving them your student ID and password, so you're not anonymous.

I don't understand why people ask questions they already know the answer to. You said yourself, mate88, it's a 500mb limit, they check up on you and it's not anonymous. To me, that sounds far too risky. Seedboxes are cheap. Mine is €10 a month for 333GB and comes with VPN and SFTP (FTPES).

Originally Posted by Bluntedking

I don't understand why people ask questions they already know the answer to. You said yourself, mate88, it's a 500mb limit, they check up on you and it's not anonymous. To me, that sounds far too risky. Seedboxes are cheap. Mine is €10 a month for 333GB and comes with VPN and SFTP (FTPES).

Well, I thought there was a chance because it's a secure connection. It's a temptation anyway as I know that their connection is like at least 100Mbit if not 1Gbit. Are there any acceptable ways to hide your activity then? Ways that are accepted by the tracker, yet not bringing me to their attention at the university. And really they shouldn't be checking my space unless I exceed the disk space or their servers get too much load.
And I haven't set up VPN there yet, I wonder do they require my details once it's been set up, I don't really know how VPN works.