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Can I stay "under the radar" by throttling download rates

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  • 16-10-2007 9:25pm
    #1
    johnnog
    Closed Accounts Posts: 38 ✭


    Hi

    I just have a question about Bittorrent. I've just gotten it working on my machine here. I know that some organisations have rules against not using bittorrent and the like but it is sort of a grey area here. I'm using azureus and that has an option to limit the upload/download rate. I've been using this to limit the rates down to a fairly low rate as I've heard that a fast rate would cause an obvious spike. I'd imagine that the system logs would show something up and it's probably the case that there are traffic monitoring tools that would give my total activity over a period of time but I was sort of wondering, what type of speed should I limit the download rate to to stay under the radar so to speak. I'd imagine that it would probably depend on the total volume of traffic though.

    I have it set to a max of 15kB/s and I only let it run during the day when there is plenty of other traffic passing through the machines. I left it unlimited once for a minute or two and it got up well over 100kB/s. I think even up to 140 or 180 or something like that.

    The way I have had to set it up, out of necessity was to tunnel the connection through an ssh tunnel to a machine with outside access. This also means, as far as I am aware, that unless the traffic is actively "sniffed" when it is coming across to my own machine then they have no access to it. That said, I'm sure that the sysadmins could easily deduce from the traffic shape that I was using torrents. Azureur does have an option though for "transport encryption", which I am using and I think can sort of blur the shape of the traffic.


    So the question is, is there a chance that I could let it go on unnoticed? I'm conscious not to overdo it and "kill the goose that laid the golden egg" so to speak. I'm not doing anything illegal ;) but they might bring in rules if they thought I was abusing their connection for personal use..... which I sort of am doing. (But sure if they've no rules against it....). I know everything is ultimately traceable and I'm not thinking I can ever get total 100% anonymity I just don't want to be seen to be taking the proverbial.


Comments

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    #2
    jor el
    Closed Accounts Posts: 16,713 ✭✭✭✭jor el


    Depends on the company/organisation and their policy. In some companies this would be a sackable offense so be very careful. Limiting the speed is unlikely to do anything for you as the network administrator will be able to see all traffic types and the constant download/upload, even at low speed, will stand out. Consult your company's Internet usage policy before doing anything.


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