BT Blocked at School?

[JerseyMonkey]

Ok, my school currently seems to block Bit.Torrent.

The only odd part, is that when they first seemed to block BT, generally one task would still continue downloading. Like, BT used to work, and one day they decided to block it. That day, all my tasks stopped working, except for one which kept working for about a week or two until I rebooted my computer. I was curious, if there is anyway to recover that technique that allowed that torrent to work when it is supposively blocked.

Another odd thing, is that I am capable of getting a list of all the users available to download from, (tracker requests seem to be working.) but nothing downloads. In the log report, I receive the error 'Unable to log UPnP port to ip ****'

Any alternatives?

[dbr]

It's probobaly not working because there are no ports forwarded though their switches/routers to you....

Though it slowly working is odd, maybe they decided to completely drop all traffic over the bittorrent ports, which does fit with it it working (Them not knowing/thinking about it), to realising "Hey, maybe thats why our bandwidth usage has increased", to adding rules in to drop Bittorrent packets..

I can see why they did this, since bittorrent can easily be used to download, erm.. questionable content.

Two things I can suggest, one being a smart-ass, one a usefull response

1, don't, just download stuff at home

2 (Usefull reply this time! ), try the encrypted packet headers, changing the port to something like 80, 443, or 22 (Web/HTTP, SLL and SSH).

Oh, if that "Unable to log UPnP to blahblah" just suddently appeared recently, it's possible they just disapled UPnP (Automaticly opens nessisary ports up on NAT/Routers), which is fairly scarey if they did have that enabled/publicly accesible.. And the reason your downloads worked before is because uTorrent could open the ports :\ (Which means it would be easy to write something to open a control port, and turn the PC's in to a botnet, among other things.. :S )

- Ben

[JerseyMonkey]

Thankyou for the reply. I will test what you've recomended. The main reason I want to find a way around this is because I like to download legal things such as anime subs for unliscened animes, and other such things. I would gladly download stuff at home, if it was not an hour and 30 min. away from my school, and i'm stuck living in the dorm for the next four years. =/

I am going to test your ideas. Also, I've never seen the "Unable to log UPnP to" is because I've been using BitComet for the past year and I decided to move over to UTorrent now.

Thankyou once more for your help.

*edit*

I 'enabled' encryption, and tested port 80. Still nothing. Is there anyway I could search online for a program to scan my network for what ports are capable of transfered encrypted data?

*edit2*

I went to this site. http://www.whatsmyip.org/ports/ I tested all my ports, in hope of maybe seeing that a port is open, but doubted it. The odd thing is, it states that port 80 is blocked on my network. How could that be? That would mean they changed the ports for http, how could I find out what port http is using then?

*edit3*

Heres what is problem the most important problem for this. I seem to be behind a proxy, which pretty much fucks me over pretty bad. So far the only real thing I've heard that will allow me to get beyond this, is http tunneling, and I have no knowledge of such things.

Also, i've been running port scans for every single port usign this website. http://www.auditmypc.com/freescan/selscan.asp?S=2058

So far, the only open port seems to be 7076, which does not seem to be working for BT with encryption.

*edit4*

Found out another port open. 60543

[dbr]

Open ports aren't really important, as they will (probobaly) not be forwarded to your PC..

If you need a proxy to access the internet, go into Internet Explorer/Firefox, and Tools > (Internet) Options, then in IE, Connection tab, click the LAN Settings, in firefox, General Tab > Connection Settings

If theres a proxy (I'm assuming your browser works of course), write down the Address and Port, then put them into uTorrent

That might work, but no guarante..

Few other suggetsions, you could use a proxy on your home PC, or a friends home PC, and use that to download stuff (Or run uTorrent and a FTP server like Filezilla, and set it to download to the shared folder), but if you have a fairly slow upload speed (most home connections do..) it could be hard to transfer files over 50mb..

Try downloading Tor (Or TorCP), infact, it's changed to http://www.vidalia-project.net/ now.

Basicly you install that, which puts on Tor, Privoxy (set up to use Tor), and a front end to Tor.. Then you'd set uTorrent to use localhost port 8118 (HTTP proxy), or localhost port 9050 (SOCKS Proxy)

Assuming tor connects, you should be able to download though that.. But, people don't like you using Tor for this, as it uses a lot of bandwidth and slows it down, but if your not downloading much, it should be okay (Don't hold me to that though), another but is the speeds can be pretty slow (Depending on what nodes you get shoved though, which is all down to luck really..)

Final option, which is more an alternative really.. Buy a USB wireless adapter and use a nearby open wireless access point to download stuff (use a laptop with wifi first to check there is an open one in range though).. Not the best by far, but, espically in busy towns/citys, there tends to be a lot of open wifi access points around, which you can connect to and use the internet (A lot haven't changed the deftaul admin password, which means, among other things, you can open ports etc...), not exactly the most legal option, but come cafes etc have public access points (Which you wont be able to open ports normaly, I hope anyway..) which you could theoreticaly use.. Again not the best if you download a lot, or often

Oh, one fairly obvious option, you said you used BitComet before, and it works, have you re-tried this recently?

If all these fail, in the command promt, type...

tracert www.google.com

And paste what you get here, and it might show something (If you have a proxy etc) (To copy/paste from cmd, you right click and select "mark", drag over what you want to copy, and right click, then paste)

- Ben

[JerseyMonkey]

Thankyou for the help. I checked IE, and the proxy is not listed through that. My school uses a program to force you to register your MAC address on the network, and after that you are allowed on the network. I do not know the proxy information, since I do not use it directly.

I am thinking about using your second suggestion, but I remember in the past when I used BT it would kill my home internet connection, so I find it hard to beleive that i'd be able to access the computer while it is downloading such things, making it rather difficult for that to be a reliable source.

I will try using Tor once again, I had it recomended once before, so I'll try it again soon.

The area my university is located in the suburbs, so buildings are a bit apart, so chance of stealing a wifi signal would be rather difficult. All the current WIFI locations on campus seem to now block BT.

BitComet worked until they shut off BT, it works the same as Utorrent being that neither can start a download, but they can get a peer list.

Traceroutes, pings, and such are blocked at my school. =/

I reallly appreciate the ideas. I will test Tor again later on today.

*edit*

I tested Tor, and I dont' seem to fully understand how to get it owrking if i'm doing this correctly. I ran the program, and used the port 8118 since it said it was listening to that on local host. I set it as the listening port, nothing. I went into 'Proxy Server for HTTP Requests' and set the ip as 127.0.0.1:8118 Type : HTTP, nothing. Tried using the other port same ip but using Sock4 and 5. Nothing. Am I doing something wrong, is it it blocked at my school? I notice some small movement in the Tor graph, but it is like Recv:30 kb Sent: 10 kb. I have some decent knowledge on this stuff, so i'm not really a newb at doing this, but I cannot seem to figuire out how to get it working.

I decided to try starting/stopping the torrent to see if there was any improvement, and I receive the tracker error : "Proxy Error : No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it." Am I doing this incorrectly, or is it blocked?

I also attempted using my actual ip instead of the internal loopback for chance of that it was possible not working correctly. Still isn't working.

[dbr]

http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/doc/tor-doc-win32.html Explains most things, TorCP takes care of most things now, other than configing the programs (obviously), before you had to set up Privoxy seperatly

If Tor is connected, using a Socks 4 or 5 proxy to 127.0.0.1:9050 should work, and the default port for Privoxy is 8118 (Says in the message window when you double click the Privoxy window)

One problem I just realised with the Tor thing, is that AFAIK uTorrent only sends data to the trackers via Tor, not acctual connections, so I'm not sure if it'll help

Oh, in the Tor Message history window, it should say "Tor has successfully opened a circut, looks like it's working"..

I think, if you can't get Bittorrent working at school, runnign it at home and a FTP server is the best way

A really important thing (Taht people seem not to know about) is limiting the upload speed, it varies connection to connection, but I have a 256kb up speed (2mb/s down though.. grr). So I limit my upload speed in uTorrent to 20kbs.. If it goes any higher than 25, and I'm using something like MSN, or the internet etc, and the upload speed goes to over 25 or 30kbs, it completely screws the connection, and slows everything down...

Basicly look at the average speed uTorrent uploads, and then take of about 5 or 10 kbs, and use that as your max up speed..

I think thats why it was so slow when you used it at home, if you limit it, and try not to download of the FTP when your still downloading, the speed should be fine..

Anyway, kinda run out of things to say.. Oh, last thing, is this your computer on the schools network, or the schools computer ? Unless it's the last option, I don't see how they blocked tracert :s

- Ben

[JerseyMonkey]

Thankyou.

[Firon]

Tor should NOT be used for BT. Tracker communication you can do, but not the rest.

[dbr]

Yep, as I've mentioned.. Most torrent programs don't router anything but tracker communication anyway..

- Ben

[motley]

let me know how this goes. ive tried a few of the things suggested on here, but i havent had any success yet. i havent tried the tor thing yet because they have it to were we cant open .exe files, .mp3 files, and other files like that on the net. so i gotta go home and download it. i cant get my client to connect either. the little bubble at the bottom just stays that orange color and i never get it to turn green...no matter what port i use.