[prokrast]

So I'm wondering if there are any tricks to using BitTorrent when it seems as though the ports are blocked (I used Azureus to check ports 6881-6889, and they all return NAT errors, which I assume means they are blocked). I know a little bit about ports and networking, but obviously not enough to figure out a way around this. Can I use some other port that my net connection allows. This is at work (which is an institute of higher learning, where I didn't think they would do this, my college never blocked any ports). Anyway, I obviously have no access to opening up those ports, so I was curious whether there were any clever network workarounds. I've taken to using BitTorrent as a poor man's Tivo, since it's easy to grab recent TV shows. I'd love to use all this bandwidth at work.

Thanks for any insight . . .

[Person Man]

Originally posted by prokrast:
I'd love to use all this bandwidth at work.

And so would several thousand other students on campus, as well. High bandwidth sharing applications, when run by that many students will suck down bandwidth so fast there won't be enough left for anything else (i.e. research). The internet doesn't exist solely for entertainment or commercial purposes; they're sharing the same connection as everything else.

Colleges can either a) throttle the bandwidth on those ports so as to make it not worthwile or b) block those ports entirely. And they don't do it just because the amount of illegal use (because there ARE legal uses of the technology), but because of the scale.

Many colleges were blocking Napster LONG before Metallica (and the recording industry) started jumping up and down and screaming about stealing their music.

The problem with these bandwidth-hungry applications is that you might think to yourself, "well, it's just me, or I'll only be on for only a short period..." Well, on a college campus, when you have, say, 500-1000 (easily could be more than that) saying "it's just me, or I'll only be on for a short time, etc," it all adds up.

Before colleges started blocking Napster (again, LONG before the record industry started getting very vocal), there were times where people couldn't get any legitimate work done.

Note that I'm not trying to "preach" or accuse you of anything. I'm just explaining (in detail because without this much detail, people will try to rationalize and explain why they're the "special case.") the reasoning behind blocking something like that (and it's NOT just because of the potential for doing illegal things).

[prokrast]

Hmmm . . . I guess I'll just rely on my good ol' DSL connection at home . . .