All Users: Please Enable Encryption!

[j0hn]

thats way off the mark
i have encryption enabled for the sake of others, as my isp does not traffic shape.
utorrent tells me if the person im connected to has encryption enabled. the majority of seeds/peers i connect to have encryption enabled.

those with enough sense to read up on protocol encryption have enabled it, as they will have read that even if they are not being throttled themselves, turning it on will let them download from throttled users, who otherwise they wouldnt be able to.

in short, enabling encryption wont slow u down. it can though, increase ur speeds, if ur throttled or not.

[acid777]

sorry i thought it would cut down your connections to only people with encryption enabled. If it's going to benefit others i'll give it a go

[coppercox]

enabled encryption also....speeds were much faster than usual for smaller seed groups....hmmm...maybe just my imagination....

[oo3]

I just enabled it on utorrent. It seems about the same for me. Maybe just a tad slower, but it could be because people started leeching on another seed.

[nORE]

hmm.. interesting i immediately turned it on thanks for the information

[Neva]

What about the other 2 options for allowing non-encrypting incoming/outgoing connections??

If you enable those options it allows connections in/out with those clients that are not USING encrypting. This will generally speed up your downloading speeds so it should be enabled(not all bt users are using encrypting).

[wanderlust]

I use uTorrent latest (1.6 atm) and Azureus latest (2.5.0.1_B2 atm) and have both with encryption enabled, but compatibility for older clients enabled too.
I also use safepeer in AZ, and regularly download the blocklist for uTorrent. Gives just that extra bit of security without the extra resources required by Peer Guardian or similar.
(I use the clients on separate machines, BTW ! - And am lucky enough to use an ISP that does not appear to throttle BT in any obvious way. I DO change my ports from time to time, and mostly keep in the high ranges. Most private trackers do not allow common P2P ports in any case. Most private ttrackers of which I am a member ban BitComet for not being a fair sharing client, and older versions of uTorrent and AZ because of cheat mods. Bit Tornado is only useful for those who only share one or two files at a time. If you are going to share more than that, then uTorrent and AZ are equals in my eyes - AZ if you've got a reasonable fast and modern machine, uTorrent if you are short on resources....)

[Pr1nc3]

Enabled it when I replaced BitVomit with uTorrent couple of months ago. Since then, my u/l and d/l speeds max out!

[smeghead]

yup, my client is azureus and spent 2 weeks last year after getting broadband fekin aboot with upnp settings and the like only to find that if I enabled encryption it circumvented the packet-shaping that my ISP had only just implemented, b£$%ards. Anyway I have had excellent torrent speeds for well over a year and enable encryption by default whenever I have to re-install or transfer to new HD.
I do however also use the option for unencrypted connections. I do find the majority of connections use encryption but for ones that don't, it does affect my d/l u/l speed if I don't enable this setting.

Anyone see Bram Cohen's proposal on encryption and shaping?

from http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/77097

Bram Cohen's Cache Dreams

Pushing caching idea on ISPs to avoid traffic shaping

Posted on 2006-08-08 09:25:06 by Karl

Bram Cohen and the Bit Torrent boys are tired of simple geek adoration, and are eager to profit from their creation. As such, the company has been trying to strike deals with legitimate content developers and the RIAA/MPAA. For this reason, they're obviously not thrilled that ISPs are throttling all Bit Torrent traffic, as the throttles don't care whether Bit Torrent traffic is legit or not.

Users are getting around the traffic shaping by changing ports and employing clients that use encryption, something Bram Cohen argued wasn't the "solution" back in January. This isn't Cohen's preferred solution, clearly, because it ruins the company's financial plans. Cohen, eager to get on the right side of ISPs, has been selling the idea of caching Bit Torrent content to ISPs in order to reduce network strain.

"We spent an extraordinary amount of time face to face with the largest ISPs in the world who now see anywhere between a third and up to 70% of all their traffic in the BT protocol," recently stated Bit Torrent CEO Ashwin Narvin. "[We’re] trying to convince them there’s a better way to manage the BitTorrent protocol then to limit it and to shape it."

Their caching solution, implemented in the latest Bit Torrent client release, utilizes the "Cache Discovery Protocol” developed in cooperation with Cachelogic. The protocol makes it easy for ISPs to detect the most popular torrents, cache the data, and seed the torrent.

One obvious problem is that ISPs certainly won't be caching pirated content, which makes up the majority of Bit Torrent traffic. To control this traffic, they'll almost certainly continue to lean on traffic shaping - which leaves Cohen and company in a considerable quandary.

-- Not intend to start Bram bashing have seen enough of that on forums to last a lifetime, just curious as to what people think of the idea, and what the future holds for encryption as a means to beat shaping.

[zaguar]

How much does encryption currently affect the download speed of uTorrent?