Bittorrent From Only Internet2

As you may have noticed, our connection to the Ineternet is often quite busy. In addition to our connection to the “Commodity Internet,” Gustavus also has an extra fast connection to Internet2 which connects colleges, universities, and research institutions on a very fast network. While our Internet connection is very busy most of the time, our Internet2 connection is usually under-utilized.

We’ve tried to do some user education to encourage people to download things from the web from other colleges and universities when possible, but what if you want to download something which is available using bittorrent? (Such as the many legal movie downloads at http://www.legaltorrents.com/ or Linux install CDs.)

We’ve created a list of all the “non-Internet2” ip addresses on the Internet, which should allow you to download only from Internet2 sites. In addition to using a less costly resource (Internet2) instead of a more costly resource (Commodity Internet,) I’ve also found that downloading using bittorrent from only Internet2 speeds up the downloads a lot.

You can set up uTorrent or Azureus to use this list by following the directions below.

For uTorrent, download http://homepages.gac.edu/~sommere/ipfilter.dat and put that file in “c:documents and settings[your user]Application DatauTorrent” (“Application Data” will be hidden, so you will need to change your settings to show hidden files.) Then go into uTorrent’s settings, to Advanced Settings, Enter “ipfilter.enable” in the text box and click “Set.” Any torrents you start downloading after doing this should only download from Internet2. If you want to disable this later, just set ipfilter.enable to false in the advanced settings.

For Azureus, install the “SafePeer” plugin. Then go to the Plugins menu and select “SafePeer.” Make sure the Blocklist is on, and then go to the blocklist tab. Change the Blocklist URL to http://homepages.gac.edu/~sommere/spconfig.txt and click save. Then restart Azureus. New downloads should all use only Internet2.

Remember, you should only use bittorrent to download things you have a legal right to download, and that whenever you download something using bittorrent you are also allowing other users to download the same file from you. While there may be fewer RIAA “agents” on Internet2, there almost certainly are some.