It would be really nice if KTorrent allowed encryption on a per torrent basis.. like.. an option in the right-click context menu.

Regards,
nix

just wondering why anyone would really want this option. Encryption doesn't really hurt torrent speeds that much and some clients only allow encrypted connections. I think it would just clutter up the UI. Unless what your really asking is to disable unencrypted connections per torrent. Yes, in my mind there is a difference.

johnjaylward wrote:just wondering why anyone would really want this option. Encryption doesn't really hurt torrent speeds that much and some clients only allow encrypted connections. I think it would just clutter up the UI. Unless what your really asking is to disable unencrypted connections per torrent. Yes, in my mind there is a difference.

exactly.. "disable unencrypted connections per torrent" couldn't put it better myself. like an option in the right click context menu "disable unencrypted connections" wouldn't clutter the ui after all. However, I doubt that would be somewhat difficult to conceive in the planned command line version.

Thanks.

The point of encryption was to bypass ISP slowing down bittorrent by making it impossible for the ISP to see if a connection is a bittorrent connection.

So, there is really no reason for enabling or disabling this on a per torrent basis, either your ISP is throttling you or it isn't.

George wrote:The point of encryption was to bypass ISP slowing down bittorrent by making it impossible for the ISP to see if a connection is a bittorrent connection.

So, there is really no reason for enabling or disabling this on a per torrent basis, either your ISP is throttling you or it isn't.

That is very true to the fundamentals. However, please consider the following case where our ISP does not throttle BT traffic:

* torrent A contains majority of peers whose ISP throttle traffic and thus encryption required for max. throughput and thus max. peers will have/use encryption.
* torrent B contains majority of peers who cannot or do not enable encryption for some reason and thus encryption needs to be disabled for max. throughput.

Enabling/Disabling encryption system globally will affect one of these two. Do you not agree?

Regards,
nix

nixclusive wrote:
That is very true to the fundamentals. However, please consider the following case where our ISP does not throttle BT traffic:

* torrent A contains majority of peers whose ISP throttle traffic and thus encryption required for max. throughput and thus max. peers will have/use encryption.

Agreed -- it's in your best interest to enable accepting encrypted connections regardless of whether or not your own ISP throttles.

* torrent B contains majority of peers who cannot or do not enable encryption for some reason and thus encryption needs to be disabled for max. throughput.

As long as you don't specify the only accept encrypted connection option, they should fall back to standard unencrypted bittorrent without any issue. At least that's what I've noticed.

In the settings under General at the very bottom, there are two checkboxes. The first one "Use Protocol Encryption" does just that. It turns on encryption. The second "Allow Unencrypted Connections" will allow your client to connect to clients who do not have encryption enabled.

Right now I have both checkboxes enabled, and I can see that I have both encrypted and unencrypted peers that I am connected to.

I think people are looking for this change, because of the the "illegal" aspects of bittorrenting.

Well it's not like Torrent Encryption means anything in terms of privacy of data being transferred.

bassmadrigal wrote:Right now I have both checkboxes enabled, and I can see that I have both encrypted and unencrypted peers that I am connected to.

I think people are looking for this change, because of the the "illegal" aspects of bittorrenting.

..then there are torrents where we wouldn't want any unencrypted connections and there are torrents where we don't mind the connection state at all!! I guess you're right.

P.S.: I think a poll is just for that. Thanks.

I'm beginning to think this is more of a privacy issue rather than a technicality. I mean.. if somebody had to come after you, all they would need to do is join the swarm other than eavesdropping

Besides, I guess the number of connections is somewhat proportional to the throughput. Limiting that isn't such a nice idea after all. Moreover, this may require some kind of modular separation of the encryption code (if it isn't already) which would be really taxing for the developers.

Encryption on a per torrent basis -- bad idea.

This should close the case. Thank you everybody.

Regards,
nix

Umm, what privacy? Bittorrent Protocol encryption's purpose is to make it harder for a throttler to identify Bittorrent protocol traffic. It doesn't at all prevent knowing what torrent you are on, and probably with trivial work all the data you send can be decrypted too. At any rate if you are comparing Bittorrent throttling to something like GPG encryption or SSH/tor tunneling, you are setting yourself up for a FALSE sense of security.

I think it would only introduce more complexity where none is needed.
Besides,like what as already been said,the purpose of bittorrent encryption is more like obfuscation than strong encryption cause it needs to be eficient.