If you pirate music, you're downloading fascism!

[Arjan Hulsebos]

On Wed, 8 Apr 2009 18:56:10 -0400, Paul Mather wrote
> On 3 Apr 2009, at 5:48 AM, Arjan Hulsebos wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 2 Apr 2009 17:19:27 -0400, Paul Mather wrote
> >
> >> Secondly, it  appears to turn the P2P approach entirely on its head
> >> by forcing all  traffic through the VPN instead of... peer to peer.
> >> That's kind of  dumb for a P2P application, or at the very least,
> >> not very scalable.
> >
> > You could, rather than just setting up a tcp connection for p2p  
> > exchange,
> > build a VPN first, then set up the tcp connection through the VPN.
> 
> Actually, what you're suggesting above is to have peers make 
> encrypted  connections to each other (which isn't quite the same as 
> routing  traffic through a VPN).  Lots of BitTorrent clients already 
> support  this.

No, that's not what I mean. I'm talking about using IPSec, and sending AH, or
ESP traffic rather than TCP or UDP.

> > Or the VPN could be used for client-server traffic only, then you'd  
> > only need
> > one VPN.
> 
> Lots of trackers support encrypted connections, too (including The  
> Pirate Bay); again, not quite the same as a VPN.

Again, that's not what I mean.

> > Not sure why you would do either, though.
> 
> They are quite handy for defeating BitTorrent traffic shaping, which 
>  is why those BitTorrent extensions arose in the first place.  

Using port 80 on your client probably would also do (unless your ISP doesn't
allow you to run webservers at home).

>  Unfortunately, for popular/notorious sites, you can still block 
> access  to the tracker based upon its well-known address, and can 
> still do  traffic shaping by snooping data from unencrypted tracker 
> connections  and then blocking (even encrypted) client connections.

Then the next step will be distributed infrastructure, like DNS servers and
trackers. But that's too close to the botnet model to feel comfortable, I must
admit.

Gr,

Arjan H

--------------------------------
Rock in the 70ies:
   substance inhalation, hotel devastation, and amplifier obliteration