Get the NEW Torrent Search NOW!!



IP filtering with uTorrent

posted by dubstylee in bittorrent // 923 days 23 hours 40 minutes ago
If you've been using BitTorrent to download any of the more popular files, such as the latest episode of some major TV show, you may have found yourself receiving lots of "Wasted" data. This is data that has been discarded after being deemed corrupt or invalid by your BitTorrent client. Every so often, you will have received more wasted data than the size of the files you are downloading!

This is happening because Anti-P2P organizations are actively polluting P2P networks with fake peers, which send out fake or corrupt data in order to waste bandwidth and slow down file transfers. At its worst, when downloading major copyrighted torrents, as much as a fourth of the peers you are connected to can be attributed to various Anti-P2P agencies. There is also a much more serious side to this. Once you've established a connection to one of these fake "peers", your IP has been logged and will most likely be sent to the RIAA/MPAA!

But there is a way to fight back! If you are using the latest µTorrent (1.5), you can employ a little known feature called IP filtering. The author of µTorrent has gone out of his way to hide it, but it's there nonetheless. But before we can activate this filter, we need to retrieve a list of currently known Anti-P2P organization IPs.

This is most easily done by downloading the latest blacklist from Bluetack (the same people who wrote SafePeer for the Azureus BT client) at http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/nipfilter.dat.gz. This list is updated daily, and contains all known Anti-P2P organizations, trackers and peers, aswell as all known Goverment/Military IP addresses as collected by the Bluetack team. Once downloaded, extract and rename the file to "ipfilter.dat" in preparation for the final step.

To make the list available to µTorrent, you need to put it in %AppData%uTorrent. So type this into the Address Bar, or click Start -> Run and type it there. After placing the ipfilter.dat in this folder, start µTorrent and go into preferences (Ctrl+P), then click on "Advanced". In the right hand pane, make sure that "ipfilter.enable" is set to true, and then close the dialog. That's it for the configuration.

You can verify that the list has been loaded by looking under the "Logging" tab of µTorrent, where you should see the line "Loaded ipfilter.dat (X entries)".

Congratulations! You are now protected against most of the garbage-distributing peers; and the likelyhood of the RIAA or MPAA knocking at your door has been substantially reduced! I'd go as far as to say that you shouldn't be using µTorrent at all without this feature turned on! And even if the law enforcement side of it doesn't bother you, you should still be interested in reducing the amount of garbage data that gets sent your way, which in turn leads to quicker downloads, and isn't that something everybody should strive for? ;)

Note: It's advised that you update the list at least once a month, to keep you updated on the movement of the Anti-P2P organizations. One tool that will aid you getting these updates is the "Blocklist Manager" from the same people who made the list; go to http://www.bluetack.co.uk/ and download it. On a related note, this note from the µTorrent FAQ should come in handy: "To reload ipfilter.dat without restarting µTorrent, simply open the preferences (ctrl+p), and press enter to close it again."

  • #1    Ok, so how can we retrieve the list Anti-P2P organization IPs
    posted by axlman 923 days 22 hours 18 minutes ago
  • #2    Follow the story link and read.
    posted by Greylin 923 days 20 hours 20 minutes ago
  • #3    I've done everything it said to do and the log of UTorrent doesn't say the DAT file is loaded...HELP!
    posted by MrGonzo 923 days 18 hours 26 minutes ago
  • #4    Yeh..well...who cares if they get our IP addresses...they can't sue a million people or more.

    This is the same thing as peerguardian from the looks of it.

    Utorrent should send out a list of banned IP address that are giving out bad data...then have a community banning protocol in place.
    posted by Ne007 923 days 16 hours 55 minutes ago
  • #5    I've never run into one of those bad seeds, I've had at most a couple of megs wasted on a file, and very rarely any 'hashfails'.

    I could see the torrent program being set to put a session ban on any peer that gives out too many bad pieces, then damage to the torrent would be limited. Snub them.
    posted by Boomer The Dog 923 days 12 hours 58 minutes ago
  • #6    Azureus does this allready. In fact it warns you then blocks the IP's that send you bad data. It keeps a running total at the bottom and allows you to easily clear it if you want. It also allows you to import IP's from huge blocklists.
    posted by phalkon30 922 days 19 hours 10 minutes ago
  • #7    Yeah, I'm sure more clients will start banning these morons that upload worthless data, say, 10MB?
    posted by Theinfamousone 922 days 12 hours 34 minutes ago
  • #8    What's the MPAA/RIAA gonna do if you download a TV show anyway? Let's just say I'm downloading a few episodes of Lost that are obviously recorded off "the air" with commercials cut out, first of all, the MPAA doesn't care, and they can't sue you even if they did because they dont have copyrights to it, maybe Fox or NBC or whoever, but I've never heard of them worrying about an already aired TV show being dlownloaded so much that they are going to hire 4 million lawyers and start their own bot searches etc. etc. and try to upload fake data, LOL. I can't see that happening any time soon either.
    posted by Theinfamousone 922 days 12 hours 31 minutes ago
  • #9    Even if it has aired in America, thats not to say it has in the rest of the world. Fox / NBC / Whatever sell these shows to networks in other countries. If they're freely available on the net then they're value depreciates.

    "Lost" is a perfect example, in the UK we're on episode 4, I'm watching the second to last episode thanks to the yanks, and as such, don't follow the series on UK TV.

    Less people watching means less ad revenue.

    It all comes down to money.
    posted by thepuzzler 922 days 7 hours 17 minutes ago
  • #10    @MrGonzo

    Go download the free Blocklist Manager from BlueTack, use the converter tool included to export Generic - IP Range "Unpadded" List as ipfilter.dat. Once you have the ipfilter.dat & follow the instructions from the story's link, uTorrent would be able to use it! Have a safer computing experience! :)
    posted by DigitalJunkie 921 days 13 hours 16 minutes ago
  • #11    don't forget to rename the file to ipfilter.dat! I totally forgot and was wondering why the hell the file is not loaded.

    this file really does it! I was trying to download 2 files for several days, always getting bad chunks. then I added the ipfilter, restarted utorrent and 2 minutes later the downloads finished! great!
    posted by WRFan 821 days 22 hours 47 minutes ago
  • #12    for some reason the link you provided just came up with the list of ip addresses, nothing else. how do i download them?!
    posted by AbsolutePwn 558 days 19 hours 58 minutes ago
  • #13    Heres how to make it work since the instructions did not work for me, first go to start-->Run type %AppData% then find utorrent folder, put in ifilter.dat file go to utorrent set filter to false then exit utorrent open it back up and set ifilter value to true then it should work
    posted by Poe420 489 days 19 hours 35 minutes ago
  • #14    watch online tv channls, and online movies, Download movies

    http://masti101.net
    posted by Zain101 293 days 7 hours 20 minutes ago
  • #15    the instructions say: "%AppData%uTorrent"

    it should be: "%AppData%uTorrent"
    posted by eminn3m 281 days 12 hours 12 minutes ago
  • #16    this site seems to take out the slash sign but there should be a backslash between %appdata% and utorrent
    posted by eminn3m 281 days 12 hours 8 minutes ago

Login to ZeroPaid.com
Username
Password

* Be sure that you have cookies enabled in your browser, without them you will not be able to login correctly.

Register here if you are not a member of Zeropaid.com.

members that voted for this story
© 2000 - 2008 Zeropaid Inc, All rights reserved.
Company Info | Contact Us | Zeropaid Crew | Advertise | Cheap Cars
Hosting Provided by:
San Diego Colocation - Complex Drive