DIYers IT Zone

Malaysia’s ISPs is one of the country that well known to cause trouble for BitTorrent clients or P2P in general because they limit BT and P2P connection.

Click here for more country.

I came across a post from TorrentFreak where he showed that by encrypting our torrents, it can prevent throttling ISP’s from shaping your traffic.

What does encryption Do?

The RC4 encryption obfuscates not only the header but the entire stream. This means that it’s very hard for your ISP to detect that the traffic you are generating comes from BitTorrent.

How do setup encryption?

This is different for all clients; check the setting for your favorite client. Below included 3 famouse BT clients such as Azureus, bitcomet and utorrent settings.

1. Go to: Tools > Options > Connection > Transport Encryption

2. Check the ‘require encrypted transport’ box.

3. Choose RC4 in the ‘minimum encryption’ dropdown box

*note that RC4 uses more CPU time than the plain encryption or no encryption. It is however harder to identify for traffic shaping devices

4. You can choose to tick the ‘Allow non-encrypted outgoing connections if encrypted connection attempt fails’ box. This will ensure compatibility with clients that are not using encryption. However, it makes it easier for your ISP to detect BitTorrent traffic. I recommend that you try to tick this box first. If you are still not getting proper speeds untick it

5. Tick the ‘Allow non-encrypted incoming connections’ box

1. Go to: Options > Preferences > Advanced > Connection

2. Go to: ‘Protocol encryption’ You can choose between ‘auto detect’ and ‘always’. Auto detect will give you more connections but offers less protection against traffic shapers.

I would recommend to try auto detect first, if that doesn’t increase your speeds you need to switch to always

1. Go to: Options > Preferences > BitTorrent

2. Go to ‘Protocol encryption’, you can choose between ‘enabled’ and ‘forced’. ‘Enabled’ will give you more connections but offers less protection against traffic shapers.

I would recommend to try ‘enabled’ first, if that doesn’t increase your speeds you need to swich to ‘forced’.

3. Ticking ‘Allow legacy incoming connections’ allows non ecrypted clients to connect to you. This improves compatibility between clients but makes you more vulnerable to traffic shapers.

I would recommend to tick this box, but if that doesn’t increase your speeds, untick it!

For those who encrypted you BT clients, kindly reply here your result see whether encryption can bypass ISPs limiting and throttling BitTorrent traffic.