Blocking bittorent

[dororke]

Hi team,

My wonderful son, may God bless his 10 tiny toes, spent the whole weekend downloading 20Gb of stuff using Bittorent. In the space of 2 days he's chewed through a third of the monthly data allowance.

So I set about blocking traffic here (having first handed out some fatherly advice) and chose to check the block box on the bittorent signature page, but this had no effect when I tested it on my PC. So off I came to this forum and found a couple of threads where it would appear the problem may lie with the application dynamically changing its signature, then I also spotted in the same thread that version 8 may deal with this.

I'm using 9.0.2 but it seems that although the protocol app is identifying usage correctly it seems not to want to block. Is there a way around this, or any other good suggestions out there to prevent him being a naughty boy.

[jcoehoorn]

Since you have monthly caps on your bandwidth, you may find it worthwhile to purchase the bandwidth control app. This app will allow you to set quotas.

If you want to stay completely free, you will have to resort to non-technical discipline and merely using untangle to log what he's doing, so you know what you need to talk to him about. You can also use free untangle to cut off his machine entirely, if that's what you want.

[dororke]

Thanks - fully understand the non-technical solution as does my son now.

And yes I did consider capping and even trialled the bandwidth control app; but I did so in the first weeks of setting up Untangle and didn't really get the chance to evaluate its power. The real thought here though is that the monthly fees for a home user can buy an awful lot of bandwidth so it doesn't really make sense. Please understand. I'm not complaining here about what is some wonderful free software; if I were a business I wouldn't hesitate to make the purchase, in fact I'd most likely buy all the apps, but it just doesn't make sense financially for home use.

I guess I was hoping that version 8 had magically come up with a technical solution but that would appear not to be the case and that it's just not possible. Q. Would that be right?

[raditude]

When it comes to bit torrent there is no magical fixes. You can block every outbound port except 80 & 443, and most good bit torrent clients will find them and still get out. You can figure out what client he is using to download and try to create some signatures from there, although as stated they are constantly changing to bypass firewalls. Chances are if he has found his way to bit torrenting he has heard of proxy servers out there to bypass them as well (kids talk about it and figure it out at schools all the time).

[rtrice81]

Originally Posted by dororke

Thanks - fully understand the non-technical solution as does my son now.

And yes I did consider capping and even trialled the bandwidth control app; but I did so in the first weeks of setting up Untangle and didn't really get the chance to evaluate its power. The real thought here though is that the monthly fees for a home user can buy an awful lot of bandwidth so it doesn't really make sense. Please understand. I'm not complaining here about what is some wonderful free software; if I were a business I wouldn't hesitate to make the purchase, in fact I'd most likely buy all the apps, but it just doesn't make sense financially for home use.

I guess I was hoping that version 8 had magically come up with a technical solution but that would appear not to be the case and that it's just not possible. Q. Would that be right?

I wish untanlge would come out with a little cheaper pricing for a home, as it can be pricey to buy just 1 app

[ivanradisson]

Originally Posted by raditude

When it comes to bit torrent there is no magical fixes. You can block every outbound port except 80 & 443, and most good bit torrent clients will find them and still get out. You can figure out what client he is using to download and try to create some signatures from there, although as stated they are constantly changing to bypass firewalls. Chances are if he has found his way to bit torrenting he has heard of proxy servers out there to bypass them as well (kids talk about it and figure it out at schools all the time).

Let's talk about an example here:

A worker who doesnt have web access at the office (where Untangle is) but because the computer he uses is actually a laptop (company provided) he can take it home, where he browses TPB and other torrent sites, add them all to uTorrent's queue (or whatever client he's using) and the next day when he arrives at the office, he just launches uTorrent and leech away.

Untangle seems to log Bit Torrent connections and even blocks them. Which might give you a false sense that everything is ok. In truth not everything is ok, because what Untangle blocked was just a part of the problem (5%?). All the successful attempts go unnoticed.

This is... not good!

[dmorris]

Either bandwidth control with the penalty box, or application control will handle that.

[sky-knight]

Yup, your manual options are using protocol control to log devices that show torrent activity and manually block them with the firewall.

That said, since you know that unit is a problem. It's a simple solution of 1.) setting an IP reservation, 2.) creating a block rule that prevents the reserved IP from going anywhere online, and 3.) Notifying management that you have a discipline problem.

If 3.) is a closed door for you, give up now. Even with app control working its magic. You can't solve a human problem of that kind with technology. Enforcement is done in the real world, not the electronic one.

[ivanradisson]

Originally Posted by dmorris

Either bandwidth control with the penalty box, or application control will handle that.

Application control - you mean Protocol Control ??

[hlarsen]

Application Control is an upcoming application with v9.2.