Phoning Home

[quindraco]

For some reason, while utorrent is running, it will periodically try to contact IP 72.20.34.145 (which is the utorrent web site) on port 6881 via UDP. I'm not sure quite how often it does this, but it's certainly more than once per hour, say, so I find it unlikely that this is it checking for software updates. This is the only behaviour I can think of for why utorrent would have any interest in contacting this site, but checking as often as it would be seems more than a little excessive (unfortunately, while I can check or uncheck the box for "check for updates" I can't configure how often it does it, making it difficult to test my guess that this isn't what it's doing). Am I wrong and it's simply checking quite often? Or is the program doing something else, and if so, does anyone know what?

I know it's happening because I'm using a firewall, and I know utorrent is doing it because it happens even with nothing else running, and the connection always originates from my computer on the random port utorrent is using.

So, any thoughts?

[Switeck]

The other reason is to connect to the DHT network which uses UDP.

[quindraco]

Why does it need to connect to the utorrent site for that? I mean, torrenting should work without utorrent even existing, right?

[Ultima]

router.utorrent.com is used as a bootstrap to get on the DHT network. Sure, you can use DHT without router.utorrent.com, if you can find a torrent that has bootstrap information included in it. Or just disable DHT and you can stop worrying about the benign "phone home" incidents altogether.

[Dark Shroud]

This is another item that people *cough* bluetack *cough* are spreading fud about it. Why are people so paranoid about every little item without even doing packet sniffing?

[Ultima]

Spreading FUD is one way to make one's work look all that much more important, I suppose, but I can't really blame them for being proactive.

[cracki]

i just registered because that issue is what had me wondering.

don't get me wrong. bootstrapping the DHT is fine with me. it's a nice feature and i appreciate it. that way i won't have to rely on some torrent giving me the information.

but! i'd really like to be informed about that feature. i mean, uT even greets me the first time i start it. just drop in a line like "i'm gonna try bootstrapping DHT from router.utorrent.com. if you don't like that, disable DHT in the settings"... not a big step from here to there, really.

i have sniffed the packet and it has around 60 bytes payload of binary gibberish. nothing really interesting in there... i guess if i'd want to be anal about it, i could read how DHT works and decipher that packet...

the answer packet has the same dimensions and looks just as "interesting": ~60 bytes of binary gibberish.

and if you decide to be really paranoid about that, just block outbound UDP from utorrent.exe to that specific IP and port... as easy as that.

maybe a small faq entry that mentions the literal IP, so googling for it turns up something informative?

[Switeck]

Disable DHT, and see if you EVER get that again.

DHT is a NETWORK, and you have to sign in somewhere...just like Gnutella or FastTrack or every torrent swarm is a network.

There's an advanced feature "gui.bypass_search_redirect" that might also generate packets to utorrent.com website unless set to true. ...well, it would if you use the search feature in µTorrent!

[cracki]

i'm not complaining. and i'm not gonna give up DHT. and i see why uT does what it does.

i just noticed that it immediately tried to send something somewhere and it wasn't obvious to me why or what it would send. i didn't give it anything do seed or download yet, so that behavior puzzled me.

uT does go out of its way to give me a decent "first steps" setup screen. why not just make that choice (of bootstrapping the DHT) available right there?

just sayin'

[Lord Alderaan]

Cos most people aren't that paranoid. And the people who are paranoid will try and find out what it is anyway so why bother the people who don't care (the majority) with a message they will probably misunderstand (and thus cause panic) when the people that DO care find out what it is with only a little effort.