12-10-2011, 02:58 AM
THE SHORT VERSION
I'm trying to use a college campus network for torrents, but no matter what I try I can't seem to make a connection. What am I missing?
THE LONG VERSION
I'm kind of a media buff, but my place is so far out in the country that even a dial-up connection can only manage a pitiful 25Kb/s. Wah-wah-wah-wawawawawawaaaaa.
Enter stage left: a local college campus and their big, fat, juicy T3 line! Also enter: a locked-down network and sysadmins with mysterious magical powers to thwart logic - the plot thickens.
The computers as-is are hobbled nearly to death with ridiculous Windows 7 malarky and nearly two dozen programs, all of which are bloated and required by some corporation or another. Usually I just stick in a bootloader and run Mandriva. (Some of these computers have i7 cores! Cool.)
I started up Transmission and tried it out. Nothing. Did some port scans and found nothing, nada, zilch. How am I getting an internet connection if there are no open ports? *shrug* Anyway.
Tried protocol encryption, tried a proxy, tried SSH tunneling, port forwarding and VPN - nothing, nothing, and nothing. Most of the time the client can't even find the tracker.
So I went back to Windows and ran a USB version of uTorrent through the same paces - again, nothing. Tried NETSTAT and found there were some ports open, but when a torrent client requested access, it gets denied. Even a USB version of Firefox gets access, so why can't uTorrent?
For the sweet frosting layer on this frustration cake, I whipped out my cell phone and connected to the WiFi. Booted up aDownloader, and voila! Torrents ahoy! Of course, on their hack-job of a WiFi network that method tops out around 50Kb/s and is limited to the 16 gigs that my phone can hold.
I have a 1TB external drive that's just begging for me to fill. How in blue blazes is this possible, and what can I do to bypass it?
FURTHER DETAILS
Although the admins have prevented me from torrenting, they're pretty harmless. I have it on good authority that all decisions are made at the state's main office, and our on-site techs don't even have admin passwords. All they really seem to do is flash towers and sit around.
I don't want to get into an ethical discussion about torrenting or 'abusing' public networks. When 80% of all the kids in the library are fist-pumping bros who watch sports videos on Youtube and play flash games off their Facebook, I don't feel like I'm harming anyone's education by sucking up a little more bandwidth than usual.
I don't consider myself a super-user or anything, but I like to think I'm smarter than the average bear. I'm not going to school for computer programming or anything, but I work closely with them. (Electrical engineering) I can navigate the command-line as well as the next guy, but I'm using about 10% of the functions in my copy of BackTrack.
CONCLUSION
Suggestions? Questions? Remarks, comments, donations or libations?
:pirate
I'm trying to use a college campus network for torrents, but no matter what I try I can't seem to make a connection. What am I missing?
THE LONG VERSION
I'm kind of a media buff, but my place is so far out in the country that even a dial-up connection can only manage a pitiful 25Kb/s. Wah-wah-wah-wawawawawawaaaaa.
Enter stage left: a local college campus and their big, fat, juicy T3 line! Also enter: a locked-down network and sysadmins with mysterious magical powers to thwart logic - the plot thickens.
The computers as-is are hobbled nearly to death with ridiculous Windows 7 malarky and nearly two dozen programs, all of which are bloated and required by some corporation or another. Usually I just stick in a bootloader and run Mandriva. (Some of these computers have i7 cores! Cool.)
I started up Transmission and tried it out. Nothing. Did some port scans and found nothing, nada, zilch. How am I getting an internet connection if there are no open ports? *shrug* Anyway.
Tried protocol encryption, tried a proxy, tried SSH tunneling, port forwarding and VPN - nothing, nothing, and nothing. Most of the time the client can't even find the tracker.
So I went back to Windows and ran a USB version of uTorrent through the same paces - again, nothing. Tried NETSTAT and found there were some ports open, but when a torrent client requested access, it gets denied. Even a USB version of Firefox gets access, so why can't uTorrent?
For the sweet frosting layer on this frustration cake, I whipped out my cell phone and connected to the WiFi. Booted up aDownloader, and voila! Torrents ahoy! Of course, on their hack-job of a WiFi network that method tops out around 50Kb/s and is limited to the 16 gigs that my phone can hold.
I have a 1TB external drive that's just begging for me to fill. How in blue blazes is this possible, and what can I do to bypass it?
FURTHER DETAILS
Although the admins have prevented me from torrenting, they're pretty harmless. I have it on good authority that all decisions are made at the state's main office, and our on-site techs don't even have admin passwords. All they really seem to do is flash towers and sit around.
I don't want to get into an ethical discussion about torrenting or 'abusing' public networks. When 80% of all the kids in the library are fist-pumping bros who watch sports videos on Youtube and play flash games off their Facebook, I don't feel like I'm harming anyone's education by sucking up a little more bandwidth than usual.
I don't consider myself a super-user or anything, but I like to think I'm smarter than the average bear. I'm not going to school for computer programming or anything, but I work closely with them. (Electrical engineering) I can navigate the command-line as well as the next guy, but I'm using about 10% of the functions in my copy of BackTrack.
CONCLUSION
Suggestions? Questions? Remarks, comments, donations or libations?
:pirate