Entertainment Industry Ramps Up BitTorrent Snooping > And P2P users will ramp up their VPNs

reply to maartena

Re: And P2P users will ramp up their VPNs

I don't believe that is true. When you are on a VPN, the VPN server knows your real IP, but anything you connect to will not know your real IP. Instead, it will see the VPN server's IP address. All of your traffic goes to the VPN server first before going out to anything else. Also, anything coming in to you goes though the VPN server first before actually reaching your real IP via the tunnel.

If the VPN server providers don't keep logs or hand out information, then you can't be found.

Or course, this is the simplest case. I'm ignoring clever JavaScript and things like that when you browse the web.

reply to ISurfTooMuch
The point is to route your traffic through a 3rd party, which owns the IP visible to the swarm. If that 3rd part is run by responsible human beings and no logs are kept nothing you do online is traceable to your computer. The weak point is when the thugs with guns land their helicopters at the VPN's data center and steal its machines. But by then we are really at the point of politics by other means.

reply to ISurfTooMuch
In response to steve1515 and Wilsdom, yes, a setup like that would work. The problem with it is that you'll need to have insane amounts of bandwidth and server capacity to do it. The thing that makes any kind of distributed system like Bittorrent work is a large number of clients--the more, the better, since it gives you more places to get the files. That's fine when everyone is providing their own connections, but now you have this huge VPN that has to route all those transfers, so it has to have enough bandwidth to do that. In fact, it'd need to have double the bandwidth of all the data flowing through it, since those bits are moving in and out at the same time.

And, if you can set that up, congratulations, you now have another Napster, with a central server that becomes one big target. Take it out, and all the connections go down. Or, better yet, hack it, and you suddenly have access to information about every incoming and outgoing connection.

I'll agree with that. Not sure how those BT VPN serviced can handle the load they have (or will have).

reply to ISurfTooMuch
You have no clue what you are talking about and a VPN connection between a client and a server has encrypted traffic the entire time.

Yes, it does, but, as I said in a previous post, you have two choices. If you're just using the VPN to simply hide your connection to the tracker and not actually handle the file transfers, then you still have to reveal your real IP on the tracker; otherwise, other clients can't find you. The other option is to run everything, including file transfers, through the VPN. That will hide your real IP, since only the VPN server would know what it is, but the bandwidth and server requirements for something like that on a usable scale would be enormous. Unless you're taking in a significant amount of money to spend on that, you won't keep it going for long. Not to mantion that such a VPN would be the biggest target on the planet. Not only would the entertainment industry want to take it out, but, if they could hack it instead, they could see the IP of every single connection in real time. That'd really be better than trying to take it offline.

There is a third option--to dynamically establish VPN connections between client computers that were sharing files. That would at least keep those transfers hidden from anyone running DPI, and the bandwidth requirements would work, since you don't need a central server to handle every single one. However, now you're talking about having every client running a VPN client/server setup that has to work out new connections automatically as you connect to and disconnect from other computers during a transfer. It can be done, but it still doesn't hide your IP from the tracker and anyone connected to it.

reply to steve1515
I think that they work now because no one has tried to scale them up to levels that could handle a significant percentage of the Bittorrent traffic. As traffic increases, either they'll have to purchase more bandwidth, or connections will start to slow down until the VPN's eventually become unusable.

reply to ISurfTooMuch
BT over a VPN works exactly like BT through your ISP. The only difference is that your "window to the world" is at the public end of your VPN instead of your ISP. As long as your VPN provider has enough bandwith, you will get full speeds while using it.

I use two VPN providers; StrongVPN and Private Internet Access.

Strong has got rock solid connections and I get my full bandwith. I use strong to stream BBC shows that are only available to UK residents. I connect to one of their servers in Manchester and get great speeds. Strong does log your IP and will provide that info if a legal request is made for it. They will also drop your account if someone complains about copyright violations.

Private Internet Access is what I use for BT. I get a full bandwith connection to the server closest to me, they don't keep any logs and use shared IP's. If presented with court order to turn over user info, there is no info to turn over.

As long as the VPN provider has enough bandwidth for the number of users, there is no slow down.
--
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom; it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." William Pitt the Younger

reply to Wilsdom

reply to ISurfTooMuch
I disagree.

When you're on a VPN any external query sees the VPN ip address, not your home ip address. The traffic is encrypted from your home to the VPN.

The weak point with VPNs is what happens if the VPN is asked for your info. The thought on this. Is say your using a Swedish VPN and you live in the US. So the Swedes notice your filesharing and and send a letter to the VPN. They find out your American their law doesn't apply to you. The VPN is basically causing one more headache for the those on an IP witchhunt.

The other is that there is a modern push for ISPs to retain logs so that they can be used against you. There doesn't seem to be a push for VPNs to do the same.

What if your VPN cycled your IP address every few days and didn't keep records.... If VPN's don't have to retain logs, it would be hard to figure that out.

Lastly. There's always going to be a country and has weak laws. There will be big money to be had for VPN's in those countries.

reply to steve1515

reply to tmc8080
Everything and everyone has a price. The VPN services know what their connections are being used for. Don't think for a second that they won't become **AA lackeys for the sufficiently large enough price.

reply to ISurfTooMuch

reply to ISurfTooMuch
Torrentfreak list several torrent - VPN centric providers.
»torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-provi···-111007/

I dont torrent so I cant speak to how well they do.
I saw one of them supporting SOCKS proxy. This
would anonymize just your torrent traffic.

The other alternative would be a seedbox.

It's whack-a-mole.... The copyright holders have
been playing it since napster. It doesn't
seem to be working.

reply to Rekrul
No, what I'm saying is that you'll need twice the bandwidth of what many people would assume you'd need to download a file of a given size. Say you have a 2 GB file. For a Web site or a single Bittorrent user to transfer that file in a given amount of time will take a given amount of bandwidth. However, the VPN will need twice the amount a user or Web site would need, since the file is essentially moving in and out of the VPN at two points: the uploading user and the downloading user. It'd be like transferring a large amount of data through the LAN side of a router. That data isn't just using one port; it's using two: the port of the sending computer and the port of the receiving computer.

My point here is that, in order to accommodate a large number of users downloading all these files, a VPN is going to need a very large amount of bandwidth, and it won't come cheap.

reply to Skippy25
Surf obviously knows what he/she is talking about. You should pay attention while school is in session.

A VPN is no different than a router with an additional subnet. It doesn't eat "twice as much data".