my ISP limits bit torrent traffic by sabotaging attempts to connect to the tracker more then once every x amount of time. ktorrent's default behavior of retrying the tracker every 30 seconds makes it impossible to make any further tracker connections after a single one of ktorrent's connections has failed in any way.

what I'd like to see to solve this problem is an option to never attempt a tracker connection less than x amount of time after the most recent attempted connection.

what do you all think?

Tejing

ktorrent follows what is specified in the .torrent file. Most torrents I find are set to a 60 minute cycle. 30 seconds would be insane and totally hammer trackers, and end up in getting ktorrent completely banned from all trackers.

that isn't what I meant. I mean a setting for _minimum_ time between tracker requests across _all_ torrents. the issue is avoiding being completely unable to function under the described limitation of my ISP. (I would think some other ISPs probably do this too)

also, the 30 seconds I mentioned is ktorrent's default behavior when it fails to contact the tracker. it waits 30 seconds between retries, thereby keeping the ISP from letting any of the requests get through.

Tejing

In the new beta the interval is even a little bit longer when it keeps failing. This is a good thing. There is just no need to keep knocking here when we've tried it once already.
(what if the tracker is restarting or just having a webserver down and 500 client are announcing every some seconds... that's nightmare and should be avoided, even more if it isn't that much of use anyway)

tejing wrote:that isn't what I meant. I mean a setting for _minimum_ time between tracker requests across _all_ torrents. the issue is avoiding being completely unable to function under the described limitation of my ISP. (I would think some other ISPs probably do this too)

It's very likely the devs will not like this idea.
A client should listen to what interval a tracker likes to see, it shouldn't be up to the user. And if you meant a setting for retrying interval ONLY when the tracker can't be reached: i don't see any means of that either, 30 seconds is already fast and i don't see how announcing any faster than that will suddenly get you connectable to the tracker.

tejing wrote:also, the 30 seconds I mentioned is ktorrent's default behavior when it fails to contact the tracker. it waits 30 seconds between retries, thereby keeping the ISP from letting any of the requests get through.

I don't see what the 30 seconds have todo with you not getting in contact with the tracker, if your ISP is doing some playing with your traffic (or even the dns proxy in your router is bugging you) you're not getting any help out of hammering. IMO it´s not a proper solution to a problem we don't even know where it started.

I think what he's saying is to keep track of when every tracker was last contacted, not per torrent, but globally, since it seems his isp limits the number of connections made in a certain period of time to a single site. Multiple torrents from a single tracker could be hitting the tracker every 5 seconds for a short time.

Tomasu wrote:I think what he's saying is to keep track of when every tracker was last contacted, not per torrent, but globally, since it seems his isp limits the number of connections made in a certain period of time to a single site. Multiple torrents from a single tracker could be hitting the tracker every 5 seconds for a short time.

And why would they do this ?

Why would an ISP try and sabotage p2p traffic? I don't know, you tell me

That doesnt make any sense if they wanted to stop you p2p'ing they would simply block the torrent sites period preventing you from every connecting to the dozen or so popular trackers would all but kill your torrenting. (not completely thanks to DHT :p). Of course they can simply shape bittorent traffic to nothing or block the popular bit torrent ports such as 6881.

I highly doubt your ISP is doing anything fishy in the manner you describe, there is far more effective ways to stop you downloading.

None of the really effective ways of blocking bittorrent are affordable for most ISPs. My ISP happens to be the national Cable company as well, and they managed to pick up a million plus device that scans for bittorrent in the stream, and then throttles it. Soon even encrypting BT wont help.

Tomasu wrote:Why would an ISP try and sabotage p2p traffic? I don't know, you tell me

I can understand their motives for throttling bittorrent traffic, what I don't understand is why they want to approach this via tracker connections.

They might not have the infrastructure to throttle based on application level protocols. Its all really guesswork though.

Limiting HTTP requests in practice?
Nah, an ISP doing that should quit immediately, IF there would even be one or two doing this. I think it's highly unlikely to be used. Perhaps they could do it after they have detecting it's bittorrent traffic, but than still, the proposed solution is not one of a kind which should be considered IMO.

I can still see the functionality being usefull. If you have a literal ton of torrents loaded, most or all from the same tracker, that could cause a ton of requests to hit the same tracker many times. Not exactly a good thing. But will clients be banned for such behavior?

I think some of you have the wrong idea. He wants to check the tracker LESS often. He wants to be able to (for example) tell KTorrent NOT to try the tracker for say 30 minutes if it crashes out.

If he asks too often, his ISP won't let him through to the tracker at all. So, with the default of checking the tracker every 30 seconds when the tracker fails, he is totally screwed.

I myself didn't get the bit of whether or not the funcionality is built into KTorrent, or if it's in the .torrent file. Either way around, he needs to be able to change it.

OK, more time then.

Let's for the sake of this topic assume that there really is such an unprofessional ISP out there.

Why would a client need it?
The http request will not limit the functioning of swarm in any way. You'll get your data anyway.
Btw, what ISP are we talking about?