Circumventing network restrictions?

Cervantes1337Cervantes1337
edited November 2006 in Science & Tech
Hey guys,

Recently moved into some new housing at my college and the internet connection sucks. There seems to be some kind of filtering used for the network. Packet encryption seems to help for some apps, but there's really just a few games I want to play and the network always seems to be cutting off my connection after a short while. Anyone have any ideas on ways around this? My only thought was to setup a server at home that I could tunnel through. I also read about a similar techniques that disguises all network activity as http signals, but I've never done this. This connection is really starting to get on my nerves.

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2006
    Beyond packet encryption there isn't much you can do. If they have a very aggressive timeout setting for inactivity or are doing deep packet filtering to try and prevent file sharing your are pretty much at their mercy once any data leaves your router/modem.

    If you had access to a server else where you could create a VPN tunnel with it and then have it do all your work for you then they shouldn't be able to packet scan you and the VPN tunnel should count as a constant active connection if they have an aggressive time out feature set. But to create a good stable, reliable VPN tunnel you need to do it with hardware and not software. I'd recommend a couple routers modified with DD-WRT's firmware to create the tunnel.
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited October 2006
    Just be careful with anything you do, as circumventing such measures could possibly get you in trouble.

    kryyst, do you think he'd be fine playing games and stuff through a VPN? I think the latency would kill him anyway. :ermm:
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2006
    Cyclonite wrote:
    Just be careful with anything you do, as circumventing such measures could possibly get you in trouble.

    kryyst, do you think he'd be fine playing games and stuff through a VPN? I think the latency would kill him anyway. :ermm:

    Hard to say. If they are throtteling across the board then it won't mater what he does the bandwidth simply isn't there. If however they are throttling only sorts of traffic then going through a VPN may be the only way he can keep a constant connection.

    Now of course this is all assuming that 'they' are doing something and the problem doesn't reside on his end.

    Actually one thing you should check is your MTU size. If you have a router there should be a setting in the router to specify your MTU size. If not google Windows XP MTU settings. You'll have to edit some registry keys to make the change. But your ideal MTU setting is 1492.
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited October 2006
    kryyst wrote:
    Hard to say. If they are throtteling across the board then it won't mater what he does the bandwidth simply isn't there. If however they are throttling only sorts of traffic then going through a VPN may be the only way he can keep a constant connection.

    That makes sense. I don't know why I didn't think of that.
  • AranyicAranyic Casstown, OH Icrontian
    edited October 2006
    I'll tell you how this will most likely end :), they'll see persistant high(er) bandwidth connections coming from your account that they know is not web browsing. They'll investigate and you will more than likely get your account turned off for a time period. Then you'll be without net access at all for a period of time.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited October 2006
    That's also a very real possibility. Ultimately the end result is that if they want their rules enforced they'll go about enforcing them one way or another. They are your ISP and you are at their whim. Any advice we are giving you someones most likely already tried there long ago and they've adapted to it. It's really all a question of how long can you pull it off before getting caught.

    Now one other trick is that you can setup a parrallel router situation so that it makes it very hard for them to resolve who specifically within a subnet is leaching the bandwidth.

    Other tricks snif to see if anyone has an open wifi network you can piggy back off of.
  • Cervantes1337Cervantes1337
    edited October 2006
    Yeah I've already considered the increased usage that someone might notice from my IP, I also had to register my MAC address with them, so I try to keep the usage down whenever I am doing p2p with encryption. I was trying to read up on the subject, the games are probably impossible to play through a proxy or tunnel. I can still manage to play games once in a while, but it seems like sometimes I'm always getting disconnected even though the connection seems otherwise stable. I've though about the Wifi, don't even have a wifi card though. Thanks for the ideas
  • DJ_EvergreenDJ_Evergreen MB, Canada Member
    edited November 2006
    Cervantes1337 wrote:
    I also had to register my MAC address with them

    No problem there. Find someone else's mac on the network and then clone yours to match it when they are not on :thumbsup:
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