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Technology Advice by Ryan Taylor Adams

How to Encrypt BitTorrent Traffic

December 13th, 2007 · No Comments · Printer Friendly Version

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 Encrypting your torrents will prevent throttling ISP’s from limiting your BitTorrent bandwidth and potential stop packet snooping. The  encryption obfuscates not only the header but all the BitTorrent data. This makes it very hard for your ISP to determine if that data coming to your computer is from BitTorrent. Read on to find out how to enable encryption:

Do I even need encryption? Good question, if your primary goal is to prevent your ISP from limiting your BitTorrent speeds then check the list here to see if your ISP does throttle bandwidth.

To use encryption in Azureus:

  1. Go to: Tools > Options > Connection > Transport Encryption
  2. Check the require encrypted transport box.
  3. Choose RC4 in the minimum encryption dropdown box.
  4. You can choose to check the Allow non-encrypted outgoing connections if encrypted connection attempt fails box. This will ensure compatibility with clients that are not using encryption. However, it makes it easier for your ISP to detect BitTorrent traffic.
  5. Check the Allow non-encrypted incoming connections box.

To use encryption in uTorrent:

  1. Go to: Options > Preferences > BitTorrent
  2. Go to ‘Protocol encryption’, you can choose between enabled and forced.
  3. Checking Allow legacy incoming connections allows non ecrypted clients to connect to you.