College Speed Limiting Problem

[kstrike155]

Hello,

I go to a University that has a traffic shaping algorithm that I just have not been able to crack.

It detects when there are multiple TCP sessions originating from your computer. It doesn't care what kind of protocol the traffic is.

Here's how it works:

I have found that I can download torrents at full speed for about 30 minutes. At this point, my HTTP browsing slows to a crawl (literally, minutes to load a single page). Eventually uTorrent slows down, too.

I find that any number of connections greater than 10 makes the internet die on me.

So,

does anybody have any suggestions as to how to funnel ALL uTorrent traffic through a SINGLE or LESS THAN 10 TCP connections, while still allowing me to connect to tons of seeds/peers?

Thanks for any help,

Brian

[Firon]

A pay VPN service, like Relakks or SecureIX.

[kstrike155]

The problem is that I cannot get through the firewall to use VPN.

I already have a VPN server located back in the states that I could use, but I can't connect to it. Every port except email and http is blocked.

Any other suggestions?

-Brian

[kurahashi]

Every port except email and http is blocked

If this is true, then I'm stunned by the fact your torrents are working at all (even those 30 minutes)

[kstrike155]

Well I have talked to the network admin in the past and he says:

"ResNet is a separate network and is controlled by three firewalls behind

which sit all the residences on campus. Access to the network is limited

by the number of individual TCP sessions a client has, the higher the

number the slower the speed becomes."

Also, when I tried to access an HTTP service on port 81, it was completely blocked.

It is confusing, though, because I asked the admin about it and he said I could provide an exception to get around the proxy for that. All I had to do was add it to my "no proxy for" list in Firefox to avoid using the proxy and gain access to the site on port 81. Here was the explanation:

"The problem is that the remote site is running an http service on a port that is not assigned to the http protocol. The proxy servers are configured to only allow connections to services that run on their officially assigned ports."

Wouldn't this mean that the proxy is only used for HTTP connections and I could bypass it all together for TCP connections? Whenever I have done this, though, I receive HTTP errors from the trackers.

Either way, I am blocked from using port 1723 it not "every port".

Any suggestions with the above info?

Thanks,

Brian

[kurahashi]

Ok, so what we know for sure is that your www browser is using a local http proxy (which is configured to work at default 80 port) and that why you had to make an exception for the 81 port. This makes clear also why torrent works - because it doesn't use a http proxy and probably all (or almost all) outgoing ports are open for you. Now,

Wouldn't this mean that the proxy is only used for HTTP connections and I could bypass it all together for TCP connections? Whenever I have done this, though, I receive HTTP errors from the trackers.

huh? Whenever you've done exactly what? I don't understand.

Either way, I am blocked from using port 1723 it not "every port".

So you are saying your VPN service is listening on port 1723 and you can't connect?

Hm. Do you have the possibility to change the port of the VPN service?

[kstrike155]

Whenever I switch the proxy OFF in uTorrent, I get HTTP error messages trying to connect to trackers.

I have tried connecting via VPN on port 443, too, and I still can't connect. I don't have the capability to change the port that the VPN server is run on.

Thanks,

Brian

[kurahashi]

Oops. This most probably means that, apart of using proxy for outgoing http connections, administrator is also blocking some well-known ports. Including 80 (http default) and 1723 (VPN default). If you can't change the server port from 1723, then I'm afraid there is nothing you can do about it.

[Switeck]

"Access to the network is limited by the number of individual TCP sessions a client has, the higher the number the slower the speed becomes."

THIS means even if you do get things working, you'll get best results with very low connections max and very low half open max. You'll also have to disable DHT, resolve ips, show country flags, etc.

[kstrike155]

Right, that's how I have it set up right now. I have DHT off, resolve IPs off, and max connections set to 10. It sucks

Oh well, just another month until I'm back in the good ol' U S of A.

-Brian

EDIT:

So I contacted the network admin, and he says they don't block outgoing connections.

I couldn't believe it... Windows Vista's Firewall was blocking my VPN.

All is well now

-Brian