LibTorrent Peer ID?

[wdaniels]

Hi, I was just reading the RC3 release notes and saw that the libtorrent source is no longer to be distributed with Deluge. It occurred to me that this does make the idea of using the peer ID or user agent strings with "whitelists" and "blacklists" on trackers somewhat redundant as it relates to Deluge then, if there is no clear relation between the version of libtorrent and the client version reported to a tracker.

So, basically, I was wondering if anyone has considered whether deluge should use the LibTorrent version in the peer ID and/or user agent string instead of the Deluge client version?

[andar]

There is no point either way and tracker whitelists are stupid.

[jazd]

I agree that whitelists are stupid, but some sites use them and it is bloody annoying when you upgrade to the latest version of Deluge to find you are blocked.

Perhaps if just the libtorrent peer id was used we wouldnt have this problem as much. Maybe a checkbox or advanced option somewhere to change it?

[wdaniels]

Hi andar, I'm tempted to agree that these whitelists are a bad idea, but I'm quite new to all these things so I don't fully understand why they are "stupid" exactly. The matter came up when the admins of a private tracker I use implemented a client whitelist the other day (which did not include deluge) because so many of the clients being used on the tracker were not reporting usage "properly" (which I guess might just mean in a way that this particular tracker understands) and though I don't much like the idea of having to nag the admins to add each new version of Deluge to the whitelist, I can see their point and it seems, to me, at least half-reasonable.

But I do not know enough about this stuff to really argue the point on either side, and would like to understand the issue better, for which your comment doesn't really help. I thought I had asked a valid question - I am just thinking of the situation that I could download and build the latest deluge source, which it seems would just use the exact same libtorrent on my system, yet report a different peer ID to the tracker and be disallowed even though (as far as I understand it) it is libtorrent that implements the protocol and that much remains unchanged.

Perhaps that is what you mean by "stupid"? Yet plenty of trackers seem to use these whitelists and surely all of them are not stupid. Do they not still serve a useful purpose in some cases?

[andar]

It's stupid because you're trusting the client to report it properly. It is ridiculously easy to spoof a peer id, so the idea of a whitelist doesn't really make much sense. If people are going to use a malicious client, guaranteed that client will just spoof itself as uTorrent or Vuze to evade the whitelisting issue.

A less stupid route would be to implement a blacklist and just ban those peerids that are causing issues.. This isn't really any good as per the reasons above, but it would prevent the admin from annoying the community.

[jazd]

Maybe a checkbox or advanced option somewhere to change it?

Any possibility of this andar?

[andar]

Maybe a checkbox or advanced option somewhere to change it?

Any possibility of this andar?

Wouldn't this be considered spoofing by the trackers? <grin>

I was thinking of writing a peer-id changer plugin, so that you could spoof as any of the popular clients. I'm a bit hesitant to do this because I don't think it should be necessary and it's nice to see stats on where Deluge is used. If everyone switched their Deluge to identify itself as uTorrent or whatnot, then we'd never know who or how many people are using it.

[Ideal]

Maybe a checkbox or advanced option somewhere to change it?

Any possibility of this andar?

Wouldn't this be considered spoofing by the trackers? <grin>

I was thinking of writing a peer-id changer plugin, so that you could spoof as any of the popular clients. I'm a bit hesitant to do this because I don't think it should be necessary and it's nice to see stats on where Deluge is used. If everyone switched their Deluge to identify itself as uTorrent or whatnot, then we'd never know who or how many people are using it.

I'd say about this - never hesistate/afraid of consequences to give people even more freedom than they have now at least if there are quite visible good applications for that freedom.. And thats probably regarding anything at all, not only software.. If they want that freedom for quite strong enough - they will have it anyway, because everything is open..

[andar]

Wouldn't this be considered spoofing by the trackers? <grin>

I was thinking of writing a peer-id changer plugin, so that you could spoof as any of the popular clients. I'm a bit hesitant to do this because I don't think it should be necessary and it's nice to see stats on where Deluge is used. If everyone switched their Deluge to identify itself as uTorrent or whatnot, then we'd never know who or how many people are using it.

I'd say about this - never hesistate/afraid of consequences to give people even more freedom than they have now at least if there are quite visible good applications for that freedom.. And thats probably regarding anything at all, not only software.. If they want that freedom for quite strong enough - they will have it anyway, because everything is open..

I guess what you're saying is that we should give users the option to spoof right in Deluge since it's so easy to anyways? Just for those curious, it only takes 1 line modification in Deluge to spoof your peer-id.

My real concern is that this isn't really a solution. The real solution is to educate tracker admins to stop their evil ways and abandon their pointless whitelists.

[johnnyg]

Wouldn't this be considered spoofing by the trackers? <grin>

I was thinking of writing a peer-id changer plugin, so that you could spoof as any of the popular clients. I'm a bit hesitant to do this because I don't think it should be necessary and it's nice to see stats on where Deluge is used. If everyone switched their Deluge to identify itself as uTorrent or whatnot, then we'd never know who or how many people are using it.

I'd say about this - never hesistate/afraid of consequences to give people even more freedom than they have now at least if there are quite visible good applications for that freedom.. And thats probably regarding anything at all, not only software.. If they want that freedom for quite strong enough - they will have it anyway, because everything is open..

I guess what you're saying is that we should give users the option to spoof right in Deluge since it's so easy to anyways? Just for those curious, it only takes 1 line modification in Deluge to spoof your peer-id.

My real concern is that this isn't really a solution. The real solution is to educate tracker admins to stop their evil ways and abandon their pointless whitelists.

I'm pretty sure if there was an official deluge plugin that allowed you to spoof your peer id then deluge would be banned on all major private torrent sites.
Sure it's trivial to change the peer id as it is now, but at least you have to change the source code to do it (making deluge not responsible for those doing it).

My real concern is that this isn't really a solution. The real solution is to educate tracker admins to stop their evil ways and abandon their pointless whitelists.

yeah that would be the ideal solution.