Blocking Torrents - via Router?

mumhaabu

Hello, first off, if this is not the right forum please move it mods, however I think the people in here will know what I am on about.

A friend of mine has a house which is let at the moment to students and he supplies an Eircom 7.6meg connection supplied via an old Netopia purple modem no wireless, this is connected to a Belkin router and distributed around the house wirelessly plus on a network switch to the Network wall plates in the various rooms.

However recently a few of the students have been complaining about network time outs and the speed being very slow. I gave it a visit and checked it out for him and I am certain that one or two of the lodgers and running torrents 24/7 and this is ruining it for everyone else. There is one Polish girl who hasn't been able to Skype home since before christmas so the net in the house is effectivly hijacked by these one or two inconsiderate individuals.

I have tested it at the Modem and there is 7 megs solid and 600kbps up on the connection so Eircom is not at fault.

I spoke to a friend of mine who is a network technician in Australia (a bit far away to help!) and he said I can block the torrent ports through the belkin router thus banning torrents and restoring bandwidth for the house!

How do I do this is what I want to know?? Which ports do I block?? or do I just block such words as Torrent etc?

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated as these students need the net for studies and not some warez movies.

Cabaal

Disable UPnP on the router and block the common bittorrent ports,

Alternatively look at the routers logs and whoever is using bittorrent ban there IP and MAC Address from the router after you've warned them and they still continuing using it.

Hank Scorpio

mumhaabu wrote: »

Hello, first off, if this is not the right forum please move it mods, however I think the people in here will know what I am on about.

A friend of mine has a house which is let at the moment to students and he supplies an Eircom 7.6meg connection supplied via an old Netopia purple modem no wireless, this is connected to a Belkin router and distributed around the house wirelessly plus on a network switch to the Network wall plates in the various rooms.

However recently a few of the students have been complaining about network time outs and the speed being very slow. I gave it a visit and checked it out for him and I am certain that one or two of the lodgers and running torrents 24/7 and this is ruining it for everyone else. There is one Polish girl who hasn't been able to Skype home since before christmas so the net in the house is effectivly hijacked by these one or two inconsiderate individuals.

I have tested it at the Modem and there is 7 megs solid and 600kbps up on the connection so Eircom is not at fault.

I spoke to a friend of mine who is a network technician in Australia (a bit far away to help!) and he said I can block the torrent ports through the belkin router thus banning torrents and restoring bandwidth for the house!

How do I do this is what I want to know?? Which ports do I block?? or do I just block such words as Torrent etc?

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated as these students need the net for studies and not some warez movies.

Theres a massive range of ports available to use for torrents and will work properly wont there forwarded through the router.. Do the students have access to the router or is it admin password protected? On Default Eircoms doesnt require a password.

Also i found while using torrents port 80 (http) works, but it doesnt allow for as many peers. So does 21(ftp) ETC.

I would use a good solid firewall and block all torrent programs , also blocking keywords is available but im not sure about that netopia router, for example you would block all .torrent files from being downloaded , keyword .torrent ...

Another possibility is blocking access to torrent sites or any site with torrents in its URL, but im not sure because friends could send torrents files over msn etc to bypass this

Im hungover and half drunk excuses if i dont make alot of sence at the moment!

Edit : what cabaal said, disable uPnP also a kick up the arse wouldnt go astray

consultech

You'll also need to block rapidshare / megaupload / megashares .coms and the likes, as that'll be a natural progression for them once u pikey their torrent access.

mumhaabu

Thanks for the help fellas, both belkin and Eircom routers are well secured both physically (locked in box in attic) and it wise, WPA2 is used and there are both strong Admin passwords.

I will try the tips suggested, what is the real killer with torrents is most people don't know how to configure them right and they suck every single drop of bandwidth available as a result. The upload is the killer as it prevents others even requesting a http page or access to emails as it causes timeouts.

Downloads are easier as they have far more bandwidth available 7.6megs and are faster, uploads on torrents take forever even with a fast connection. Rapidshare and Megaupload etc. are ten times better than torrents however most people are too cheap to a pay a premium account which is for pennies really. I abandoned torrents long ago due to slowness and the viruses are crap on it, at least with Rapidshare the other users of those forum's will complain alerting others.

Thanks again for the help and I will have that internet pipe locked down on defcon 3, I think I'll block pron too to annoy said offenders!!! :pac:

I'll post up later with my results, any other tips or suggestion are more than welcome.

moonboy52

get a Linksys WRT54GL router and install the tomato firmware on it. turns a 60 euro router into a much more expensive router with lots of QoS features.

Limit the times they can download on certain ports to night time, say 12.00am to 8.ooam.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=NW-052-LS



Torrenting is a dirty form of downloading as it ruins it for everyone else sharing the network. Rapidshare is much better if one is inclined to do such a thing.

PogMoThoin

Why block it?
http://www.decimation.com/markw/2007/10/03/tomato-qos-setup/

consultech

moonboy52 wrote: »

get a Linksys WRT54GL router and install the tomato firmware on it. turns a 60 euro router into a much more expensive router with lots of QoS features.

I know this is basic basic stuff, but does anyone know if this "open source" Linksys WRT54GL works on Windows? Im looking to get UPC 20mb in in the next 2 weeks, and I hear their wireless routers aren't up to much. Will be lookin to get a solid alternative off the bat and configure it accordingly.

Also, do you know if this router would support the planned 50mb upgrade? Did I read something about UPC's planned 50mb only working with DOCSIS 3.0 modems/routers(?) or something at this speed? Does this router fall into that bracket?

Learning fast, but still a wee bit out of my depth, any help appreciated...

Cheers!

moonboy52

As far as i understand it DOCSIS 3.0 means that we will need a new modem only (those with the old modem) .

The router will work on windows no problem.

it is an " All-in-one Internet-sharing Router, 4-port Switch, and 54Mbps Wireless-G (802.11g) Access Point". So you dont have to go wireless if you dont want to

It does not support wireless-N though, but for the majority of us that is not really an issue.

My two housemates connect thru wireless and have no problems. we are on the UPC 20mb package also.

There are loads of tutorials of how to install tomato on the router available and probably youtube videos(guess).

consultech

moonboy52 wrote: »

As far as i understand it DOCSIS 3.0 means that we will need a new modem only (those with the old modem) .

The router will work on windows no problem.

it is an " All-in-one Internet-sharing Router, 4-port Switch, and 54Mbps Wireless-G (802.11g) Access Point". So you dont have to go wireless if you dont want to

It does not support wireless-N though, but for the majority of us that is not really an issue.

My two housemates connect thru wireless and have no problems. we are on the UPC 20mb package also.

There are loads of tutorials of how to install tomato on the router available and probably youtube videos(guess).

Sweet, cheers for that.

Does this router support Cat6 / 1Gb? Will probably be looking to run Cat 6 between whatever router I get and two PC's. My laptop/media drive will exist wirelessly unless Im havin major probs with wifi.

Anyway if u can answer that Id appreciate it - I wont hijack this thread anymore!

moonboy52

I have no idea tbh. i would imagine if it worked on the old router it would be compatible with any modern router. Of course the tenant has to have a gigabyte ethernet card / wireless receiver to avail of those speeds and those speeds will only be between machines on the network so a 100mb card / cable will suffice. Good for the future though i guess having a 1gb cable network

Hobbes

Enable QoS on the router. Check the logs to see if you have an insane number of incoming connections to a particular machine and then set that machine to the lowest priority on the network.

Blocking ports won't stop it. disabling UPnP is just going to annoy other people on the network.

Then when they come around and complain about the speed ask to see the machine. If they have torrents running then take it up with them at that point.

moonboy52

QoS on any "cheap" router is virtually non existant. Tomato firmware does a lot more than just blocking ports

Hobbes

moonboy52 wrote: »

QoS on any "cheap" router is virtually non existant. Tomato firmware does a lot more than just blocking ports

Most modern routers these days have QoS and are not expensive.

moonboy52

all depends on what level of QoS you are looking for i guess. On my last router a wrt54gs the properiatary firmware that was on it was a joke VmWorks iirc. The ahem "QoS" on it was to give one port priority over another and no wireless Qos at all.

I want more options than that im afraid and thats where Tomato comes into play

dreamers75

Block all ports as mentioned but eircom has gone to **** lately, it could actually be that.

PaddyTheNth

moonboy52 wrote: »

QoS on any "cheap" router is virtually non existant. Tomato firmware does a lot more than just blocking ports

In fairness the Netopia one I got free from Eircom which is otherwise crap does actually do QOS. I was shocked to see it there.