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General discussion

Restricting P2P. How?

Sep 14, 2005 9:01PM PDT

Is there a way to restrict the use of P2P? I know that shaping would place some restrictions on this. However programs such as Bitcomet and Limwire do they uses a specific port or protocol that could be shutdown or restricted by bandwidth? I have noticed that my ADSL 512 connection changed overnight going from 52Kbs to 2Kbs?

Discussion is locked

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At the office.
Sep 14, 2005 9:15PM PDT

We open only a few ports. Such as 80. Almost nothing else is open. The email is from our exchange server so it has rights to the ports it needs. This wiped out P2P and online gaming at the office and our internet speeds returned.

Hope this helps.

Bob

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ISP
Sep 14, 2005 9:25PM PDT

Yes this would then stop it completely. However it has not been stopped but severely restricted overnight. Now when applying for this service it was not stated that it was not allowed and worked for quite some time. Over night something was changed and it dropped right down. Now we are trying to find out why. Our ISP tells us that if we want P2P we need to go over to unshaped and this costs quite a bit more. However seeing that it did work and did not drop off gradually that high bandwidth usage would most probably cause we feel that they are now running low on bandwidth and to compensate have restricted our P2P services.

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Maybe you can rewrite your post.
Sep 14, 2005 10:14PM PDT

I took it as you wanted to control what people did on your network. I see your goal is something else or maybe you have your answer from the ISP already, but the question as I read it is now unclear.

Try again.

Bob

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P2P Slow
Sep 14, 2005 11:20PM PDT

Maybe it was a bit unclear. What I wanted to know how you could restrict the P2P with out closing the port. Why am asking is that with our current ISP and a 512 ADSL connection when we first got it we got download speeds of around 50Kbs using Bitcomet and limewire. Over night it changed and dropped down to around 2Kbs. When contacting the ISP they told us the connection is shaped and if we want to do P2P we need to apply for and unshaped connection. Unfortunately the cost of this connection is out of range for a private subscriber.
Now my augment is although it is a shaped service and P2P take a lower priority it should have gradually drop off not over night like it did. The theory we have is they have now choked the P2P ports; however we are not too sure how this can be done.

Besides shaping giving priority to certain traffic do you also allocate bandwidth allowed for that traffic? Now we also do not have any benchmark of what a 512 should run at on these P2P programs.

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Aha!
Sep 15, 2005 12:37AM PDT

That is a bit clearer. Your ISP is shaping the traffic to give priority to non-P2P use.

"Besides shaping giving priority to certain traffic do you also allocate bandwidth allowed for that traffic?"

A rose by any other name is a rose to steal a famous line. Any method we use to restrict, control bandwidth is called shaping. If you want to rename it, please tell me the new name so I know what you mean.

At least your ISP told you why your speed dropped off.

Bob

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Shaping
Sep 15, 2005 7:08PM PDT

Ok so shaping would not only be giving priority to certain traffic. Say port 80 highest and the rest come next but also the amount of bandwidth that can be used by the port or the ranges of ports. As I understand it point to point would use the higher ports and UDP protocol. Would you also be able to shape it just by allowing http higher priority and UDP lower?

If you want to rename this thread them maybe ?ADSL Shaping? might be better

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Ports
Sep 15, 2005 7:57PM PDT

I did a test using Ethereal to try and get an idea how when using P2P ?Bitcomet? the ports are used or allocated. This is how it looked.

UDP
Source port: 24142, Destination port : 17592
24142 13488
24142 18311
24142 27034


So it looks like the Source Port being my PC and the Destination being the other side. I would imagine that the destination is changing because I am connection to a number of different users? I am a bit unclear on this I must admit.I would have thought it would be determined by what you are doing that would allocate what port you connect to. Why would it change from PC to PC if my theory is correct that I am connecting to different PC?s

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That's on the web.
Sep 15, 2005 9:59PM PDT

How TCPIP and the application works is documented. In short, you described how it works. As to why it does this, it's been beat out in a programmer's mind or via a meeting of minds to figure out how to make the application work.

I don't see an issue here.

Bob