Some ideas to help traffic shaping

[AndreasM]

I shape outgoing traffic on my LAN and noticed a feature that microtorrent lacks, that is the ability to block certain ports from being used for downloading. I've setup my LAN in such a way that data on ports 80, 443 and 22 get higher priority than the rest of the traffic, which results in being able to surf and use SSH smoothly while still downloading torrents. However, some people use ports 80, 443 and 22 for bittorrent, and because of that mistakenly get higher priority which results in not being able to surf properly.

Otherwise I think this is the best torrent client there is, thanks to microtorrent I could finally get rid of that certain java client.

[1c3d0g]

That's not µTorrent's problem but an issue with those people using those specific ports for things they shouldn't. Some people for some odd reason even use port 25, and then we get the dreaded "µTorrent is sending secret e-mails! It must be spyware!1!1!1!" threads. All you can do is (temporarily) ban those people from connecting to you... :/

[AndreasM]

I realize it's not µTorrent's fault, but being able to prevent it from connecting to certain ports other peers are using would fix the problem nicely. Maybe µTorrent could even have port 25 blocked by default, so people wouldn't complain about false e-mail warnings some firewalls are giving out. Azureus has this feature, and if I'm not completely mistaken, port 25 is blocked by default. Anyways, from your answer I got the feeling this wasn't the first time this has been suggested, so here's to hoping it will materialize in a future version.

[ReP0]

I for one hope we don't bloat utorrent with more firewall specific crap. It's a bt client for gods sake not a full fledged firewall. Why do you have a bias to ban users connecting to you through well known ports albeit ports intended for specific apps anyway. I understand your QOS situation but really how many people have it set up like you do (not many even know about QOS or even how to go about implementing it on their PC) and what are the odds people are using those "weird" ports to thawt your QOS setup..

Find a firewall that suits your needs and that way any internet app you use can benefit rather than getting utorrent to implement firewall features. To be honest I don't even believe there should of been a ipfilter functionality in utorent either because things like peerguardian and what not do a better job anyway. I guess it was implemented as legacy when in the old days there was no app such as peerguardian.

[ScubaSteve]

exactely. just use a firewall/router to block incoming/outgoing tcp on those ports.

[AndreasM]

I guess installing firewalls on all the computers running µTorrent and preventing it from connecting to the ports in question would work. I haven't used any firewall software so I wasn't aware that you can block ports per application, the built-in firewall in XP doesn't seem to have that feature. Installing extra software to run µTorrent kind of defeats the goal of reducing system bloat though. I don't agree that adding "firewall specific crap" would bloat µTorrent, firewalls and virus scanners are treatments to fix the symptoms. It should always be a priority to prevent a problem from even appearing in the first place, instead of using other applications to mitigate the problem.

ScubaSteve: Blocking outgoing tcp on those ports in my routers firewall would make web surfing a bit difficult (it isn't capable of analyzing the packets, a feature like that would be quite useful though).

[True]

This is a problem that comes with a port-based QoS solution. If you really want to solve the issue, use packet-based traffic shaping, or use your own firewalls to block those ports except where explicitly allowed. This isn't a problem with uTorrent, just a pseudoproblem with those who must use common service ports for something other than that service.

Adding this, and the other hundreds of absolutely useless and redundant features and facilities requested are also not helpful for bloat reduction - or even for anything related to torrenting a good deal of the time (just read some of them). How many applications must have their own service-specific firewalling facilities? Just my opinion, and no harshness directed to the original thread author - you didn't know about application based firewalling (which I personally try to avoid), which is okay. You do now.

[AndreasM]

As I've already mentioned, I realise this isn't a problem in µTorrent, but a problem in other peers who use ports that shouldn't be used for p2p traffic. As I don't have access to the other peers computers, I can't make them use other ports, so preventing µTorrent from connecting to those ports would be the next best thing. It's hardly bloat though, and not "own service-specific firewalling facilities" either, as there is no firewalling performed, the outgoing connections to those ports would not be made in the first place. I'm still hoping a feature like this appears in a future version though, as it is useful for those of us who want to keep our systems free of software firewall bloat. But ultimately it's up to the developers, and I can only hope they agree with me.

[Animorc]

The common-port blocking sounds interesting. But that would be like punishment to the users who are restricted to anti-p2p ISPs. As I run a mailserver, I see some strange "emails" with failsends, but it's just in the logfile, so I don't really care.

[True]

It's hardly bloat though, and not "own service-specific firewalling facilities" either, as there is no firewalling performed, the outgoing connections to those ports would not be made in the first place.

Thus, being firewalled.

[AndreasM]

To me, firewall is something that stops connections, thus acting as a wall between the trusted and untrusted network space. It doesn't prevent the connections from being attempted. Therefore I don't think not trying to establish a connection can be called firewalling.

I guess we see at the problem from different angles, to you, a firewall is probably a useful tool used to secure a network. I, on the other hand, am of the opinion that firewalls are a useless hack, and shouldn't be required if all software was designed properly. Ultimately, I think I see your point though. If you start adding features to µTorrent, it'll eventually grow into another azureus-like bloatfest. But I think it's important to think of the big picture. In this case, the feature might grow µTorrent's size by a kilobyte or two. Installing a firewall on the other hand, would probably weigh in at tens of megabytes, in addition to wasting cpu cycles and adding an annoying icon in the system tray. I guess what I'm saying is that growing µTorrent with a small amount is a fair tradeoff to installing a firewall, for those of us with external firewalls/routers. Those who are running software firewalls probably don't care about bloat, and use azureus anyways. Therefore adding this feature actually ends up reducing bloat, kind of.