A technical question:

Can an administrator, monitoring network traffic, determine which torrents I am downloading (Ubuntu ISOs vs. DVD rips)? Or can they simply see traffic?

They can only see this when they are at your box.

eosha wrote:A technical question:

Can an administrator, monitoring network traffic, determine which torrents I am downloading (Ubuntu ISOs vs. DVD rips)?

KTorrent keeps a copy of the torrent in your home directory, so if an admin suspects you are up to something and knows where ktorrent stores those torrents, he can figure out which you are downloading.

Or can they simply see traffic?

Most admins will probably know how to use wireshark, so they can see all traffic.

I don't have to worry about direct box access, at least not without a warrant (the computer's my own). Can Wireshark reveal the specific torrent file in use, or only that the traffic comes from Bittorrent?

Also, does protocol encryption eliminate this concern?

eosha wrote:I don't have to worry about direct box access, at least not without a warrant (the computer's my own). Can Wireshark reveal the specific torrent file in use, or only that the traffic comes from Bittorrent?

Depends, the info hash is sent in the tracker announce, if there is a search engine which supports searching for info hashes, you can figure out the torrent. I'm not sure though if there is a search engine which supports this.

Also, does protocol encryption eliminate this concern?

No the tracker announces are unencrypted (unless they go over https)