If you pirate music, you're downloading fascism!

[Paul Mather]

On 3 Apr 2009, at 5:48 AM, Arjan Hulsebos wrote:

> On Thu, 2 Apr 2009 17:19:27 -0400, Paul Mather wrote
>
>> Secondly, it  appears to turn the P2P approach entirely on its head
>> by forcing all  traffic through the VPN instead of... peer to peer.
>> That's kind of  dumb for a P2P application, or at the very least,
>> not very scalable.
>
> You could, rather than just setting up a tcp connection for p2p  
> exchange,
> build a VPN first, then set up the tcp connection through the VPN.

Actually, what you're suggesting above is to have peers make encrypted  
connections to each other (which isn't quite the same as routing  
traffic through a VPN).  Lots of BitTorrent clients already support  
this.

> Or the VPN could be used for client-server traffic only, then you'd  
> only need
> one VPN.

Lots of trackers support encrypted connections, too (including The  
Pirate Bay); again, not quite the same as a VPN.

> Not sure why you would do either, though.

They are quite handy for defeating BitTorrent traffic shaping, which  
is why those BitTorrent extensions arose in the first place.   
Unfortunately, for popular/notorious sites, you can still block access  
to the tracker based upon its well-known address, and can still do  
traffic shaping by snooping data from unencrypted tracker connections  
and then blocking (even encrypted) client connections.

But, like I said before, I don't know what they think a VPN will buy  
them.  Sure, it will hide *all* traffic tunnelled through it (as well  
as defeating the advantages of P2P).  However, to circumvent this, all  
you need to do is subscribe to the VPN and then you're "inside" and  
able to monitor again.  Also, because of fewer, clearly-defined  
endpoints for the VPN, it makes it easier to traffic shape everything  
passing through it.

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
  deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
         --- Frank Vincent Zappa