Traffic Shaping bypassing?

[niknik]

(Not sure about the right place to ask this question - if this isn't the proper place please feel free to move it to the proper place)

A few months ago, my ISP started implementing traffic shaping/packet filtering to mess torrent traffic.
All "well-known" torrent programs failed to get over 30Kb/s no matter what...

Deluge however, was immune to their system, and was able to fully use the bandwidth we pay for.
... until yesterday.Deluge is now being blocked as well.
(coincidentally, the ISP just recently "offered" a speed upgrade to all customers - no wonder, now that no one can use it!)

So, my question is - whatever it was that kept Deluge working while the others didn't - can't it be tweaked to once again fool their detection tactics?

I know for a fact that specific packet patterns are filtered out - I have been unable to play ET:QW for the past few months, and have been debugging tcp/ip traffic with the devs to try and figure a way to bypass it - they've tweaked the packets format a bit, and they started working again, at least for now.

So, what I was wondering is - is there anyway to stuff some random data in each packet, that would be discarded on the receiving end, just to make it harder to detect a specific torrent traffic pattern?

Or, as a last resort (and i know this would probably require a BIG overhaul) is there any chance to tunnel the traffic data over HTTP protocol, to look like regular web access - or any other method you guys can think of - that would make it impossible for ISPs to stop messing with torrents once and for all?

[jdhore]

What your ISP does is they probably ban by client ID's...They probably banned all the REALLY popular ones (uTorrent, KTorrent, Azureus, Halite, libtorrent, etc) and finally found out about Deluge recently as it seems it's getting much more popular much faster. If they did in fact ban the ClientID, the Client ID CAN be changed, but then every private tracker that supports Deluge would have to update their whitelist to allow the new client ID. So by changing it, the devs would probably put most users at a major disadvantage for a while just for 1 user which is monumentally unfair.

As for stuffing random data into the packets...That's also not really right to do (unless it's optional in preferences) and it adds a overhead to the speeds AND i personally have never heard of any bittorrent clients doing that.

As for your last question, yes, you can use a proxy for many, many things. In the preferences dialog, there are options to use any combination of Peer Proxies, DHT Proxies, Tracker Proxies and Web Seed Proxies, all of which support authentication, Socksv4, Socksv5, Socksv5 with auth, HTTP and HTTP with auth.

[niknik]

Well, I wasn't talking about this for my own personal advantage - many thousands of users already being blocked by these practices, in many different countries.
Worst thing is, most ISPs don't even admit to doing it. I've been sending them emails for over 4 months, with data packet logs showing their filtering in action, and they still deny it's their fault.

So, I'm afraid more and more ISPs will implement these systems, particularly where there are no other alternatives (like where I live.)

All I'm asking is that, as there are already options to activate encryption, for developers to consider some/any sort of mechanism that would allow everyone on these lame ISPs to bypass these filtering/shaping.

If it is of any help, when I connect to high-speed private trackers, I can still get very high speeds, tough I'm just connected to a couple of peers. So, I guess the number of connections also has some effect on the "filtering method".

[markybob]

Well, I wasn't talking about this for my own personal advantage - many thousands of users already being blocked by these practices, in many different countries.
Worst thing is, most ISPs don't even admit to doing it. I've been sending them emails for over 4 months, with data packet logs showing their filtering in action, and they still deny it's their fault.

So, I'm afraid more and more ISPs will implement these systems, particularly where there are no other alternatives (like where I live.)

All I'm asking is that, as there are already options to activate encryption, for developers to consider some/any sort of mechanism that would allow everyone on these lame ISPs to bypass these filtering/shaping.

If it is of any help, when I connect to high-speed private trackers, I can still get very high speeds, tough I'm just connected to a couple of peers. So, I guess the number of connections also has some effect on the "filtering method".

it's a cat and mouse game. if we could always stay ahead, we would...but it isnt too easy, considering we need to remain compatible with every other bittorrent client. especially since we're open source and they can see exactly what we're doing we'll keep playing the game. we'll tweak what we can, when we can. that's about the best i can promise

[niknik]

it's a cat and mouse game. if we could always stay ahead, we would...but it isnt too easy, considering we need to remain compatible with every other bittorrent client. especially since we're open source and they can see exactly what we're doing we'll keep playing the game. we'll tweak what we can, when we can. that's about the best i can promise

That's all I wanted to hear, thanks.
As a developer myself, I understand exactly what you mean - I just wish I had more knowledge about the "low-level" torrent stuff to also contribute.

If/when you guys have any method you want to test, please let me know - as current versions are vitually useless at the moment.

[Ux64]

I think that best option is to vote with your money. Change ISP and get ISP that doesn't filter traffic or shape it. Often those smaller competitors also offer cheaper connections than big mainstream players. Also bigger more often are using traffic shaping, net sensorship, filtering web sites, blocking incoming connections, etc.

If your (what ever) service provider does something wrong, change it.

One ISP started to screen outgoing mail for spam. In some cases if I send an email to my friend which says "New version download: http://deluge-torrent.org/downloads.php"

My friend might not receive that email at all. Or it might contain *** SPAM WARNING *** in subject field.

It was great time to change ISP. Complaining wouldn't make any difference.

[niknik]

I think that best option is to vote with your money. Change ISP and get ISP that doesn't filter traffic or shape it. Often those smaller competitors also offer cheaper connections than big mainstream players using traffic shaping, net sensorship.
If your (what ever) service provider does something wrong, change it.

Unfortunately, that's not even an option. Not every country/city has a lot of ISPs to choose from.
In my case, the ones we have is a big monopoly - and they have just recently bought on their main competitors (to make it even worse.)

Besides, my main issue with them is doing it covertly: denying they do it!
If they want to block torrents, ok, it's their option - but at least TELL us, the costumers, they block it!

I paid for internet access, not internet "blocking" - but again, unfortunately I have no other broadband alternative, other than use any possible mean to enforce the connection I'm paying for.

[dxwolf]

Story of my Life! I have 18Mb and and without the shapping i could go at 1.7MB/s now Im at 25KB/s :-S ..... But if the TS shapping is with CLient ID can't Client ID be Encrypted when packet goes and decrypted only on the server side? uhn!?

[markybob]

those of you having throttling problems, try svn trunk. there have been some changes that i think could help and we need people to test to see if it provides faster speeds. thanks

EDIT: i mean linux users only.

[niknik]

Care to be a bit more explicit on how to do that?

I'm a programmer myself, but never actually worked with those "multi-developers/versions" tools (if I'm not mistaken about what svn is)

Also, I'm running the windows version, which might complicate matters a bit more (and since the 5.8.0 version, the versions have been crashing on my PC - which is weird as I never had a problem before even with the very first versions)