Student house & downloading files via torrents

[Agent]

I've found that. Why is that? I have a 20Mb connection. A torrent coming in at about 20k can slow the entire network down to unuseable levels sometimes.

A typical connection to a websever is usually done over 2/3/4 ports for a webpage - maybe a few more on rare occasions and depending on your browser settings. Pretty low numbers generally speaking though. Most of the time its pointless opening more as the page is already completed by then.

Torrents on the other hand can open hundreds of ports - If you have a fancy router like the WRT with appropriate firmware, you can login and check this out. Times this by a few users on the network doing the same and the router soon runs out of memory/processing power.

If your on your own network and using Windows you can speed torrents up by applying the TCP/IP patch, as by default windows limits the number of connections to 10 (IIRC).

[Bleak]

Was in a student house with 5 other people, 2 of which downloaded torrents quite heavily. It became a pain especially during the evenings when the already slow connection was throttled some more. I play quite a lot of online games on the PC as well so there was never any chance of playing that without having the really embarrassing task of walking around the house asking nicely if they could turn downloads off.

Actually getting round to answering your question though, it will be the person who's registered the internet connection that will be technically responsible. But if you personally haven't downloaded anything and it goes further to court etc. and there's no illegal software on your PC then you should be alright. The chances of it actually being your household that gets caught it limited as well, I would feel incredibly unlucky if that happened to me.

[Mike Fishcake]

I don't really use torrents very much, but when I have done, I've noticed that if I don't limit the upload speed to about 35-40kBytes on a 448kbit upstream connection, the download speed reduces massively.

[Marcos]

Torrents cause problems not because of the bandwidth used, but the sheer number of connections they open.

yeah, with torrents its all about limiting the number of connections and the upload speed

[TheAnimus]

m0n0wall.

Simple, easy to use, instant security.

Plus the quality of service is quite useful for limiting peoples bandwidth (blocking torrent traffic per hostname is quite easy!).

[Spud1]

^^ What The Animus says, worked like a charm in our house Depending on how you set it up though you could have issued with 4od or BBC IPlayer..I don't know how much they would be affected though as i'm no longer living in 'that' house.

The other option is to try and convince them that they are stealing hundreds if not thousands of pounds from hard working people to feed their habit. Or if that doesn't work (and it probably won't, most illegal downloaders don't care and think it hurts no-one), to try and protect your own back you could try and convince them to use a different method of downloading that isn't so easily trackable.

[Whiternoise]

I've always wondered about that last point, is direct downloading trackable? I mean say someone puts up an mp3 on their website and you download it, can they find out if you've downloaded it without looking at your computer's cache, etc?

[Agent]

I've always wondered about that last point, is direct downloading trackable? I mean say someone puts up an mp3 on their website and you download it, can they find out if you've downloaded it without looking at your computer's cache, etc?

4 ways spring to mind

1) Your computer having logs / the file
2) The webserver will most likely have logs on who downloaded what (unless its setup not to do so)
3) Your ISP will have logs
4) Any systems that the file has passed through to reach you may potentially have logs

A SSL connection to the webserver that keeps no logs is one of the "safer" ways in theory.

[Whiternoise]

But in comparison to something like torrenting or using kazaa where your IP can simply be plucked out of a list of leechers/seeders it's reasonably safe - not that it's something you should be chancing anyway.

Computer logs can be deleted and then shredded, etc. as can the files themselves, and i guess the rest depends on the situation. The ISP will have logs, but unless you're suspected of piracy then surely it's unlikely they'll pull a random check on you. Especially if the file isn't obviously named, it could just be a random rar file or whatever.

[Agent]

Oh yes, you're correct. As a normal webserver is set up the BPI/Whoever can't just come and grab the IP of downloaders like you can with most P2P

[TheAnimus]

Another thing to remeber is there are honey pots out there trapping people.

On a p2p network like the old napster you could see a users entire catalogue. Uploading pirate material is normally considered a worse offense than downloading, so p2p methods like torrents aren't a good idea either.

[greenalien]

You might also want to consider the 'leccy bill. Anyone leaving a PC on 24/7 to d/l torrents is going to be using a lot of power - and it's not getting cheaper... A gaming PC costs 3 - 4p an hour to run - doesn't sound much, but that's around £6 per week, so around £80 per quarter. Add half as much again for a CRT monitor. Be prepared for arguments when the bill comes in, or fit pre-payment meters in each room!