Blocking Downloads (Torrents)

[glhawk]

I'm in college, and my room mate downloads a lot of stuff with uTorrent. It bugs everyone that lives with him (5) other people. I was wondering if there was a way to block downloads with your router? Or block torrents? We are using a netgear router.

 

[antiacid]

So instead of talking to him so that he schedules his downloads during off-hours, you want to be sneaky and cut him off completely behind his back?

Bad plan.

 

[glhawk]

No, not the case... I download via torrent whenever I miss a tv show, or if I can't find music off of limewire. However our ISP has already slowed down our internet from 12mb connection to 6 and have called us for 'high bandwidth' usage. He downloads 24/7... like whole seasons 1-5 of stuff or 60+ gigs of music discography's.

If you ask me, it's not a bad plan.. I don't want my internet cut off, and if anything at all, I'm helping him and everyone else in my apartment for possibly not getting caught 'downloading'

 

[thehelo]

1. Password on router.
2. Turn off UPnP in router
3. Make sure there is no manual port forward entry to his computer for bittorrent.

 

[antiacid]

No, not the case... I download via torrent whenever I miss a tv show, or if I can't find music off of limewire. However our ISP has already slowed down our internet from 12mb connection to 6 and have called us for 'high bandwidth' usage. He downloads 24/7... like whole seasons 1-5 of stuff or 60+ gigs of music discography's.

If you ask me, it's not a bad plan.. I don't want my internet cut off, and if anything at all, I'm helping him and everyone else in my apartment for possibly not getting caught 'downloading'

if you are paying for a 12mb line, then you receive 12mb service. Your ISP shouldn't be bullying you and you have free legal recourse you can use against them. You could also switch to an ISP that isn't ran by douchebags but that's another point.

Also, chances are your roomie will run out of HDD space before the ISP actually goes around to unplug you

I still suggest talking to the guy so that he understands that he shouldn't be downloading during everyone else's hours, limit his own upload/download rates whenever possible and if all else fails, make him pay for his dedicated connection while you guys get your own split between you 5.

 

[glhawk]

Thanks thehelo for the help.

antiacid- yeah I'll try talking to him again will see what happens. Bad thing is he has like 4 external HD's and 2 internal that are all 500+ gb. So, he has a lot of room. Plus our router is that apple airport thing with 500gb more space which is his. But thanks for the replies and help guys

 

[claire28]

1. Password on router.
2. Turn off UPnP in router
3. Make sure there is no manual port forward entry to his computer for bittorrent.

hi there..i have a question..How can you spot those students using illegal downloads via torrent inside the school campus?

 

[sturm]

Any network person worth a sh!t would have that blocked from being on their network in the first place. The web sites would be blocked and the programs blocked from running.

You can use a packet sniffer to read the packets.