BitTorrent protocol encryption: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:39, 18 February 2006

Revision as of 08:42, 18 February 2006

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'''Protocol header encrypt''' ('''PHE'''){{ref|name}}, '''Message stream encryption''' ('''MSE'''), or '''Protocol encryption''' ('''PE''') are features of some [[BitTorrent]] clients that attempt to make BitTorrent traffic hard to throttle. MSE and PE are two names for the same protocol.

==Why==

Some [[Internet service provider|ISP]]s throttle BitTorrent traffic because it makes up a large proportion of total traffic and the ISPs don't want to spend money buying extra capacity. Instead, the ISPs spend money on hardware that look for BitTorrent traffic and slow them down. Encryption makes BitTorrent traffic harder to detect and therefore harder to throttle. It is not designed to provide [[anonymity]].

==History==

Protocol header encryption was conceived by [[RnySmile]] and first implemented in [[BitComet]] version 0.60 on [[8 September]] [[2005]]. Some software like IPP2P claims BitComet traffic is detectable even with PHE. [http://www.ipp2p.org/news_en.html] PHE is detectable because not the whole stream is encrypted. Since there are no open specifications to this protocol implementation the only possiblity to support it in other clients would have been via [[reverse engineering]].

In late January 2006 the [[Azureus]] developers decided to design and simultanously implement a new, open protocol obfuscation method. It was included in Azureus CVS snapshot 2307-B29 on [[19 January]] [[2006]].

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Azureus supports the final spec since [[25 January]] [[2006]] (CVS snapshot 2307-B33) [http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=14596518] and µTorrent followed 4 days later with beta 1.4.1 build 407. [http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=5384] The new protocol is called MSE in Azureus and PE in µTorrent.

Azureus version 2.4.0.0 was released February 10th, 2006. This is the first full release version of a client to support the encryptionMSE/PE.

[[Bram Cohen]], the inventor of [[BitTorrent]], recently commented disfavouring on the ongoing development to obfuscate the BitTorrent protocol. [http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/29886.html] Encrypted BitTorrent users were quick to disagree with his reasoning on many accounts. [http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=5742]

==Operation==

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*[http://azureus.aelitis.com/wiki/index.php/Bad_ISPs ISPs that shape BitTorrent on the official Azureus wiki]

*[http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1083 Slyck News - BitTorrent End to End Encryption and Bandwidth Throttling - Part I] (Inverview with µTorrent devs)

*[http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1083 Slyck News - BitTorrent End to End Encryption and Bandwidth Throttling - Part II] (Inverview with Azureus devs)

*[http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/02/06/2039241.shtml Slashdot | BitTorrent and End to End Encryption]