Encrypted/HTTPS Tracker Communication

BitComet BitComet Feature Requests
1

I’m sure many of you are aware that colleges and universities are now employing something called packet shapers that would block/reduce packets of bittorrent protocols.

Client encryption was able to bypass the packet shaper but for the last few days I have been unable to connect to any trackers. Only trackers of the normal 80 port can be connected, and only occasionally.

Proxy, neither socks nor http proxies could bypass this block so far. I’ve tried http tunnelling but no luck either. The only workaround, as for now, is through a VPN connection.

So I figured the only way they could do this is through an inbound packet shape. They examine every packets in and out, and since incoming packets sent from the trackers are not encrypted, they can be easily identified and rejected before entering the network.

There are two solutions for this:

  1. server side encryption for the peer list.

  2. https connection instead of http.

either way, the packets will be made unavailable for the packet shaper to read thus bypass it.

What do you guys think?

2

Make sure you have NAT Traversial set to full as well.

But yes there is talk here and there about this. The problem with trackers is that there are so many different types/versions of tracker software. So really https might be the only way to get something going. It would have to be a joint effort though or else it would be pointless.