uTorrent ignoring Windows hosts file rules?

[simmy]

Hello,

There are a few trackers that I prefer not to connect to, so I have added them inside the hosts file:

127.0.0.1 tracker.domain.com

However uTorrent seems to be establishing a connection with these trackers anyways, which is weird...

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[Switeck]

Any chance those connections are just loopbacks to uTorrent's internal tracker?

[simmy]

Any chance those connections are just loopbacks to uTorrent's internal tracker?

Well, it loads a list of peers and seems to be seeding to them... I will investigate further, but I'm pretty sure those are valid connections.

[Switeck]

If DHT is active, you could be getting peers/seeds that way if they're public torrents.

Even if you recently had the torrents active before and never changed your ip or listening port...you might still get incoming connections for them even if the trackers were all blocked.

[simmy]

If DHT is active, you could be getting peers/seeds that way if they're public torrents.

Even if you recently had the torrents active before and never changed your ip or listening port...you might still get incoming connections for them even if the trackers were all blocked.

All the blocked trackers update OK and show an active status.

I tried ranodmizing the port, disabling (unchecking) all the Basic BitTorrent Features (Preferences->BitTorrent), but it still updates the trackers OK, finds peers (non of whom are located near me, even less using the same ISP) and even stars uploading/downloading.

127.0.0.1 tracker.domain.com

cmd->tracert

C:\Users\xxx>tracert tracker.domain.com

Tracing route to tracker.domain.com [127.0.0.1]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms tracker.domain.com [127.0.0.1]

Firefox would also honor the hosts file.

But why would uTorrent ignore it? How is it even possible that it would ignore a system configuration?