My network won't let me download torrents

[Absolution]

My campus network blocks the downloading of the .torrent. My question is is there a way to get around this? My iTunes library is very stagnant as of now.

[linkinkampf19]

How does it block it in your case? I know ages ago when I lived on campus (and Bittorrent was still new), it was still monitored but not completely blocked. I was getting 5-10 Kbps (and I was prepared to wait a week or two).

Is the torrent file itself being blocked, or the software (aka uTorrent, Vuze).

[ephekt]

If you have hosting or access to a PC off campus you could use wget or a php script or something to pull the .torrents down, zip/tar them and then download that to your PC. (Assuming they don't actually block or shape torrent traffic. The fact that they're blocking .torrents leads me to believe they probably do though.)

Or you could create a tunnel to that box and route your downloads through that.

Or you could just use Usenet. It's far superior to torrents anyway.

[linkinkampf19]

Or you could just use Usenet. It's far superior to torrents anyway.

Isn't the point of free stuff to be free? I thought Usenet cost real world money. Granted it's pretty cheap, but still. Guess it's comparable to paying for WoW or Xbox Live.

I'm still trying to figure out what is happening to Absolution though. Are his torrent files actually being blocked, or it his college broadband access shaping the traffic? Or is it both?

[ephekt]

Isn't the point of free stuff to be free? I thought Usenet cost real world money. Granted it's pretty cheap, but still. Guess it's comparable to paying for WoW or Xbox Live.

~$20 a month for basically unlimited media is a pretty good deal by any metric. Or at least that's how I look at it. What's more, you can download whatever you want without worrying about having to seed it back for a month (in the case of an HD movie, for example). But then I'm not opposed to paying for my stuff in the first place - Usenet is just easy.

Anyway, just throwing it out there. I know if I was in dorms I'd rather pay the few dollars for Usenet than even cable. Hell, I wish we had decent connections in the dorm back when I was in college.

[sponge]

Isn't the point of free stuff to be free? I thought Usenet cost real world money. Granted it's pretty cheap, but still. Guess it's comparable to paying for WoW or Xbox Live.

uh the stuff you're downloading isn't free to begin with but good try

But wow assuming you're downloading typical industry material you really are a greedy rotten bastard.

[linkinkampf19]

uh the stuff you're downloading isn't free to begin with but good try

But wow assuming you're downloading typical industry material you really are a greedy rotten bastard.

Thanks for pointing that out Captain Obvious. I download a few games and movies here and there, nothing insane. I have no money to spend to begin with (all going towards college, I'm lucky if I get a few bucks spending money, and even then...), so the next best thing is torrents. Greedy, no. Typical fucking poor college student, yes.

[Absolution]

How does it block it in your case? I know ages ago when I lived on campus (and Bittorrent was still new), it was still monitored but not completely blocked. I was getting 5-10 Kbps (and I was prepared to wait a week or two).

Is the torrent file itself being blocked, or the software (aka uTorrent, Vuze).

It blocks it as in I can't download the actual .torrent file. This is what happens whe I try on demonoid, what.cd, pretome, etc.: I click the download button and Firefox will be incredibly slow, sometimes it will download the file, most of the time it will just time out, and when it does download, it will never finish downloading the .torrent.

[Mr. E]

disable hiding extensions, instead of opening directly save it, rename the extension to something harmless under the 'save as', download file, change extension back, use file

if this doesn't work there are other more complicated things you could do, but try this first and post back

[ephekt]

It blocks it as in I can't download the actual .torrent file. This is what happens whe I try on demonoid, what.cd, pretome, etc.: I click the download button and Firefox will be incredibly slow, sometimes it will download the file, most of the time it will just time out, and when it does download, it will never finish downloading the .torrent.

If you have a valid .torrent to feed your app will it actually download the files contained therein?

disable hiding extensions, instead of opening directly save it, rename the extension to something harmless under the 'save as', download file, change extension back, use file

if this doesn't work there are other more complicated things you could do, but try this first and post back

Uh, what? This ignores the fact that most torrents are sent as application/x-bittorrent. Secondly, changing the extension only affects what shows up on your system; the mime type in the download stays the same, so you'd still have to download the .torrent to rename it to .whatever.

[Absolution]

disable hiding extensions, instead of opening directly save it, rename the extension to something harmless under the 'save as', download file, change extension back, use file

if this doesn't work there are other more complicated things you could do, but try this first and post back

Well I can't even get the download box to appear (where it asks if you'd like to open, save, etc.) so what are the more complicated things?

[Mr. E]

Uh, what? This ignores the fact that most torrents are sent as application/x-bittorrent. Secondly, changing the extension only affects what shows up on your system; the mime type in the download stays the same, so you'd still have to download the .torrent to rename it to .whatever.

You can tell it to do it another way, the fact that it defaults to open is a non-factor. As for the renaming thing I thought up, it all depends on how the university detects what you are downloading whether it would work or not. It was just a suggestion for something to try.

However, if your university is blocking you from even initiating the link, I don't know what to tell you. Have you tried to 'Save Link As...'? If not, give that a try. If that doesn't then it might be time to accept that your university's safeguards are too good for you and just wait until you go home to download things. I found a workaround for my university network, but I have to go to the library and use my flash drive to boot linux.

That is a possible other thing to try. In my experience, university networks have trouble dealing with linux.

[linkinkampf19]

Only thing I can think of is to try either a proxy or get the torrent files elsewhere and copy them over via thumbdrive or something. A hassle either way, but still, if you want your files, it's the only way from the look of it. Only other thing I can think of is to politely ask the campus IT department to unblock a particular site, as you need to get the latest Ubuntu distro through Bittorrent. Obviously only do this if the IT department has no fucking clue or that you really do need legit files.

[Mr. E]

Obviously only do this if the IT department has no fucking clue or that you really do need legit files.

As a former campus IT guy I can confirm that 95% of people in campus IT have no fucking clue about anything and are super gullible. Usually it is the other 5% you have to go to to get something taken off the block list, unless you can find someone super gullible and spin a yarn strong enough to get them to do it anyway.

[jared]

Well if you can't find any other way you could always ask a friend to download for you and send the via aim or something. If it doesn't work with the extension still for whatever reason (kinda doubtful they'd go that far) just have your friend delete the extension as Mr. E said and have them send or email it.

[bananallama!]

I have the same problem as Absolution on my campus.

An easy enough work around is to find a friend that lives off campus and ask them to download the .torrent file and send it to you over AIM. Then just go into your uTorrent, or whatever you use, and do the "Download from file" option.
It should work.

I don't even try to download stuff with torrents though, the bandwith on my campus is eatin up really quickly and i only get 1-5 kbps download speeds. Not worth it to me.

good luck

[ephekt]

You can tell it to do it another way, the fact that it defaults to open is a non-factor. As for the renaming thing I thought up, it all depends on how the university detects what you are downloading whether it would work or not. It was just a suggestion for something to try.

However, if your university is blocking you from even initiating the link, I don't know what to tell you. Have you tried to 'Save Link As...'? If not, give that a try. If that doesn't then it might be time to accept that your university's safeguards are too good for you and just wait until you go home to download things. I found a workaround for my university network, but I have to go to the library and use my flash drive to boot linux.

That is a possible other thing to try. In my experience, university networks have trouble dealing with linux.

You're missing my point. Open/Save As is irrelevant as you are doing the same exact thing either way. Changing the extension is just as irrelevant as the server is still sending the correct mime type. It doesn't matter if you call it a jpg or txt; that only affects how the file is saved on YOUR machine. The .torrent is still being served in the exact same way. Neither 'solution' actually changes anything. That's all I'm trying to point out.

Based on what's happening it's pretty obvious that he's behind some kind of NAC setup which is doing packet inspection. If this is true, the only way you're going to get around it is tunneling outside the network or figuring out a way to get the .torrents on his PC (assuming they're not shaping torrent traffic, which is probable given what we already know.)