If I were to use bittorrent app on school network- would they know?

[saahmed]

I was just wondering if I were to use ntorrent on my personal laptop on the school wifi network, would they know? You do have to use your school login to access the network. Is there a way they can detect that I am using it? Just wondering becuase I think I heard that using apps such as Limewire could lead to expulsion.

 

[jdport]

Limewire isn't bit torrent IIRC, but to answer your question if they are looking for bit torrent useage then yes they could tell. All they have to do is watch the bit torrent ports and see traffic flowing in and out of those ports to and from your computer. You could possibly specify your client to use non-standard ports, but then you wouldn't be able to connect to anything unless you knew somebody who had torrents hosted on those non-standard ports.

 

[saahmed]

Yeh I know Limewire isnt bitorrent, I just heard P2P sharing programs like that could lead to expulsion. So I assume that using bitorrent would be equivalent.

But thanks that answers my question.

 

[Azndude51]

I'm lucky because my school doesn't give a crap if we use BT.

 

[jdport]

Somehow it doesn't really seem right to make bit torrent useage be "illegal"... because there are so many legit uses for it. If you play World of Warcraft, you can't get patches without it. A lot of software companies issue patches and updates via BT. I know you don't actually want it for any of those reasons but you COULD

 

[ubercaffeinated]

i say use utorrent and use the voip port, and force protocol encryption. keep connections to a small number, and don't whore your connection too much. if anyone says anything, just say you have no farking clue what they are talking about. i doubt the school would straight up expel you without giving you a warning first but check with your network admin and read up on the policy. haha i remember as a freshman many years ago how my roommate and i used up 3% of our school's entire bandwidth over a 1 week period. And I'm talking about a UC here. lol

 

[ubercaffeinated]

Originally posted by: jdport
Somehow it doesn't really seem right to make bit torrent useage be "illegal"... because there are so many legit uses for it. If you play World of Warcraft, you can't get patches without it. A lot of software companies issue patches and updates via BT. I know you don't actually want it for any of those reasons but you COULD

yah i was thinking the same thing. BT is a pretty common distribution method these days.

 

[Nothinman]

You could possibly specify your client to use non-standard ports, but then you wouldn't be able to connect to anything unless you knew somebody who had torrents hosted on those non-standard ports.

Not true. You can use non-standard ports for the transfer and it works fine no matter what ports everyone else is using. What happens is you connect to the tracker and tell it what ports you're using, then when it gives out your IP to the other peers it includes those ports so they know how to connect to you.

Somehow it doesn't really seem right to make bit torrent useage be "illegal"... because there are so many legit uses for it.

Most of the time it's not about the legalities of it, they just don't want you saturating their network with non-work/school related things.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: saahmed
I was just wondering if I were to use ntorrent on my personal laptop on the school wifi network, would they know? You do have to use your school login to access the network. Is there a way they can detect that I am using it? Just wondering becuase I think I heard that using apps such as Limewire could lead to expulsion.

You can always find a way to hide exactly what you're doing, but there's no lying about the amount of bandwidth you're using and that's what they probably care most about. If you refuse to explain to them why you're using so much, I'm sure they can do to you whatever they can do to people they can prove are using p2p.

Try asking this question over in the networking forum. They'll tell you what they think of people who try to fool network admins.

 

[notfred]

The bittorrent protocol specifies that all transfers start with the number 19, immediately followed by the string "BitTorrent protocol". The school could identify bittorrent traffic just by watching for these 20 bytes of traffic, regardless of the port number.

 

[A5]

Also, the BT link works in both directions - the people you connect to can see your IP. My school's IT department got a "friendly" letter from EA after I downloaded some games last year (I was allowed back on the network once I proved that I deleted all infringing material.)

 

[kamper]

I would note that tunneling the bittorrent traffic out of the school network would defeat both of the above arguments, at least as far as the school in concerned. Of course, that requires control of some outside network. And I'm definitely not advocating it

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: kamper
I would note that tunneling the bittorrent traffic out of the school network would defeat both of the above arguments, at least as far as the school in concerned. Of course, that requires control of some outside network. And I'm definitely not advocating it

They'd still see the bandwidth used and figure out what is going on.

Is stealing some content really worth losing your connection or even getting kicked out of school?

For $10/month you get unlimited music listening from Napster.
For $20/month you get DVDs from Netflix.
Play last year's games or buy used and gaming is cheap too.

You don't "need" to play Oblivion this week, and it needs a patch anyway.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: kamper
I would note that tunneling the bittorrent traffic out of the school network would defeat both of the above arguments, at least as far as the school in concerned. Of course, that requires control of some outside network. And I'm definitely not advocating it

They'd still see the bandwidth used and figure out what is going on.

That's my point. (see my first post)

Is stealing some content really worth losing your connection or even getting kicked out of school?

Who said anything about piracy? I figured he was going for linux distros or something.