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My Dorm is blocking port 80 and I can't dl anything via bittorrent.

G

Gl4di4tor

Senior member
Hi, my college dorm is blocking port 80 (according to the RA) and i can't download anything using any bittorrent application, ie. bitlord, azuerus. I was wondering how i could change this and what port should I use. I've tried to change the port and played around with the settings but nothing worked so far. TIA.

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Your school has policies in effect regarding use of their bandwidth.

Asking for help to bypass such restrictions will get you and any that provide advice to do so, a vacation from here for a decent period of time.

Anandtech Moderator
 
Ask them to unblock it. It's their network, and if they don't want you and 3000 other people swamping it with that type of traffic, that's their call.
 
I highly doubt they block port 80. Port 80 is typically reserved for all HTTP/WWW traffic.

They most likely have a restrictive firewall blocking most unused ports, a packet shaper that kills traffic for non-education uses (the college I attended had one.. I even saw the evil beast >_> ... I thought about getting a joiner and rerouting the traffic to remove the packet shaper, but I liked keeping my IT job) and bandwidth monitoring.

Trust me, I doubt they will openly allow you to use BT. I remember when Napster appeared on the scene... literally the entire campus slowed to a crawl with all the traffic coming through. Hence why they got a packet shaper 😛.
 
Well, none of those use port 80 so I don't know why it would be blocking it.

Just do a random port on uTorrent and see what happens.
 
If they are blocking ports because of torrent activity... I can assure you that if you start dl'ing on any port it will be noticed. Suck it up or go live off campus.
 
It's not port 80 they're blocking but if you tried changing settings and whatnot ya might be up sh!t creek without a paddle.
 
Torrents don't use port 80, and I doubt they leave any incoming ports open to you, so I'm not really sure what you mean.

Anyway, you'll have to tunnel through some other allowed protocol to an external machine which receives your connections.

 
Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Solution:
www.netflix.com
www.napster.com

Even if you find a way to dig a tunnel to warez heaven for awhile, it could get your internet access completely disabled.
Click to expand...

Nobody said they were using it for illegal purposes. Not saying the OP isn't, but I only download patches and such over torrents, so don't assume he's stealing stuff.
 
Originally posted by: gorcorps
Nobody said they were using it for illegal purposes. Not saying the OP isn't, but I only download patches and such over torrents, so don't assume he's stealing stuff.
Click to expand...
Odds of an innocent OP: 100:1

Though I don't expect him to admit to the peg-leg and parrot with the RIAA and MPAA watching.

Besides, if you torrent against school rules it doesn't matter that you're doing it to collect all 512 linux distros, you're still violating their acceptable use policy.
 
Guys, notice the bold text added to the first post. You get signal!! :Q MAIN SCREEN TURN ON!!
 
Originally edited in by: Anandtech Moderator
Your school has policies in effect regarding use of their bandwidth.

Asking for help to bypass such restrictions will get you and any that provide advice to do so, a vacation from here for a decent period of time.

Anandtech Moderator
[/b]
Click to expand...

I'd like to comment on this bit here. Since I worked for the IT department at my college, (although this may just apply to my college only), they actually didn't care if you downloaded anything. The purpose of the bandwidth restrictors was to make sure that people who needed the Internet for school-related use (supposedly) got it over people wishing to download. I was even told by the Director of IT that he doesn't care if you download, just don't do it excessively (i.e. use too much bandwidth) and don't upload (i.e. torrent bad!) We had HBO call the college before and I believe Sony also called before about people sharing their content. I had to go to some frat guy's room and practically wipe his entire computer clean of anything that he didn't own. Poor guy got caught downloading Entourage of all things haha. I was nice though and I left his porn and some movies alone 😛.

But yeah, in short, colleges don't mind the use of bandwidth, just not to an excess. Although I understand your desire not to share circumvention techniques (as I guarantee his user agreement for the network bans such activity). Although, I can tell you that I know my college didn't restrict ALL traffic. The super secret tool that I used to download everything (and would never tell anyone about) was actually just IRC. Since no one used it, I doubt they turned on any restrictions for it. Although, the college did have port 6667 blocked I believe... but most IRC servers run on more than just that port.
 
Sorry, but the bottom line is you have to deal with it. My first year in college I had to deal with a network that used a proxy and blocked EVERYTHING besides 80, 443, and 5190 for AIM. Even AIM file transfers didn't work. Couldn't even connect on Steam. Couldn't use POP for my email. All blocked. They even filtered out websites that held information on tunneling and such.

I ended up getting an external 56k modem and using the school's 56k service for very slow eMule downloads and for downloading POP mail. Then the next year, at a new school, I was blessed with a network that blocks nothing and gives me 27 Mbps download and 15 Mbps upload. 😀 I feel it's my reward for enduring that horrid network last year.

And for all you IT techies who say the school has every right to do it to secure their own network, I agree with you to an extent, but consider these two things: 1) Blocking EVERY non-educational use of the internet, like POP email and connecting on Steam to at the very least update my games, is absurd, I mean are you living in a prison?, and 2) Consider the school I'm at now with 30,000+ users of the network and nothing is blocked at all with incredible speeds. Seems plenty secure and functional to me. So if they manage why can't others? Of course smaller institutions don't have the same bandwidth and blocking some things like online gaming and P2P file sharing is understandable, but POP EMAIL??? C'mon.
 
I was torrenting when I went over to a friend's residence. It brought the connection for the entire residence to a crawl.

I feel guilty now.
 
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