torrent + school firewall

[kiuuu]

is there torrent client that can get me past my firewall....or anything that i can do to get torrents?

Thanks,
Kyle

[irishcrazy2005]

is there torrent client that can get me past my firewall....or anything that i can do to get torrents?

Thanks,
Kyle

As far as I have looked into this, it seems like it is impossible. Although, if anyone has any ideas I would also be greatly appreciative!

-Phil

[AAR.oner]

from what i've heard, most schools firewalls aren't going to be able to be bypassed [though i'm no expert]...sorry, hope someone proves me wrong!

[kiuuu]

from what i've heard, most schools firewalls aren't going to be able to be bypassed [though i'm no expert]...sorry, hope someone proves me wrong!


yeah i finally have high speed...now i cant download much of anything

[RainDawg]

Depending on how the firewall and your school's permissions are setup, it may or may not be possible to circumvent the firewall. If they place a cap on upstream limit, you're screwed. However, if all the do is block access to normal ports there is a way with some clients to force it to use another. Use port 20 or 21 (usually reserved for FTP) and see if either of those let you become unfirewalled.

[irishcrazy2005]

Depending on how the firewall and your school's permissions are setup, it may or may not be possible to circumvent the firewall. If they place a cap on upstream limit, you're screwed. However, if all the do is block access to normal ports there is a way with some clients to force it to use another. Use port 20 or 21 (usually reserved for FTP) and see if either of those let you become unfirewalled.

Stephen,
If you could possibly expand on this a little bit, I would be appreciative. So, basically I should just try to set my listening port on Azerus to 20 or 21 and see if that works? What should it be set at normally? Thanks.

-Phil

[RainDawg]

Well, I have never had to do this before, so I will just be talking from presumption. I am interested to see how this works, if it does.

In the Azureus settings, there is an option to set the listening port, and that is default set to 6881. I believe that if you simply change that to 21, it will tell your copy of Azureus to attempt to connect to peers through that port, and circumvent specific port closures on your firewall.

That being said, I'm not an expert on port forwarding, and depending on how the firewall is setup, it may or may not work. But...it's worth a try.

[coolman5001]

If port 20 or 21 doesn't work, you could also try.. I believe it's 81. If your school computers are enabled to browse the web, they're going through 81 to do that, and I can't see why Azureus would have any problem using it, too.

[uhclem]

coolman: Port 81 won't work just because a school's computers are set up to browse the web. Browsing the web doesn't require any external connections. Your browser initiates the connection and it's the server you are connecting to that has to have port 80 or 81 open. You are confusing inbound and outbound connections. In other words you need port 80 (or 81) open to run a web server, not a web browser.

I used to advise people about this very issue during the STG era and the results were always the same: either they couldn't circumvent the firewall, or they never reported back to us on the results, which probably amounts to the same thing.

I can't see why a school with even a half-decent firewall would leave any of these ports open. It's worth a shot, but based on the results I've seen, you most likely will just have to live with being firewalled, or you will have to specifically ask your admin to open a port for you. Good luck.

[saltman]

what about the creative use of The Reverse WWW Shell and proxies, etc. :hmm:

[irishcrazy2005]

It also may not be an issue of a firewall. I know that here at Notre Dame I cannot upload or download using BitTorrent above about 1kbps. I can get much greaters speeds though with HTTP and FTP downloads. I think that this is because our OIT uses something called Packeteer, which slows traffic with specific metadata (i.e. filesharing programs like BT). This may be the case at other schools as well.

-Phil

[wazoo2u]

University IT admins aren't oblivious to the traffic patterns on their networks. They're well aware of file sharing and the programs and methods used. There's an entire cottage industry of software designed specifically to detect and block this kind of network traffic. If your Admin tells you that they don't want their network to incur the overhead, then that's EXACTLY what they mean, and they'll use all the tools available to not only prevent you from circumventing their controls, but when they see the increased traffic (should you be successful in engineering a workaround (congrats if you do BTW :clap: ), they'll surely boot your ass off the network when they discover you.

My advice..... DSL or Cable... split the cost with your roomies.... OR petition the .EDU to allow you to PAY for bandwidth. Maybe you could work out a better deal, but getting it for free in today's day and age is becoming less likely.