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Nolf-Job
11 Jan 2007, 10:37pm
I'm on an academic network using utorrent, and it appears as though they're throttling bandwidth. I was wondering how the type of traffic is being detected and if there is anyway to get transfer speed up. Even with plenty of connections, it rarely exceeds 5kB and whenever a transfer is going, internet traffic drags. TIA
Thrax
11 Jan 2007, 10:41pm
They're using a technique called packet-shaping. Every protocol: HTTP, FTP, BitTorrent.. All incoming/outgoing data has a specific design to it. No two types of traffic look alike (Without trickery). Packet-shaping monitors the design of the traffic and filters it out.

You might try enabling network encryption with uTorrent, or investigate more audacious options like a Hamachi VPN, SSL tunnelling or a proxy.
RWB
11 Jan 2007, 10:43pm
Probably monitoring it by ports... you could try changing the ports the BT client is using and see if that helps, but they could have it set to all but certain ports as having the lowest priority.

HTTP is port 80 for example, so knowing this if you wanted all HTTP traffic to have bandwidth limited to 5kbps, then you just need to restrict that port. BT though can use many ports, practically any I think. So it may be that there is nothing you can do.
Thrax
11 Jan 2007, 10:48pm
They don't monitor by port. BT clients come configured with several dozen different ports, and port-blocking has the nasty side-effect of stopping legitimate traffic.
Nolf-Job
12 Jan 2007, 12:17am
Ya, it's not port specific. Thanks for the tips though, I'll have to look into it.
Pterocarpous
12 Jan 2007, 03:51am
I'm on an academic network using utorrent, and it appears as though they're throttling bandwidth. I was wondering how the type of traffic is being detected and if there is anyway to get transfer speed up. Even with plenty of connections, it rarely exceeds 5kB and whenever a transfer is going, internet traffic drags. TIA
I use FindNot VPN (http://www.findnot.com/) and have been happy w/ it. Monitors will only see that traffic is being passed - not what traffic.
rapture
12 Jan 2007, 11:02am
Cisco IOS has had support for shaping encrypted bittorrent traffic for a while now, not much you can do if that's what the network is running on.