Public Networks and Torrents

I must advise against using networks without permission, as this violates laws for many states in the U.S. including my state, Arizona. This article assumes you have full permission to use the networks in question and that the techniques herein have been explicitly (or implicitly) deemed acceptable and appropriate for your purposes.

I've heard things like "torrents are illegal;" they're not. Transferring copyrighted content may be, depending on your country. So here is my opinion on the morals and ethics of copyright infringement, et al. ... Just kidding, I find the moral and ethical talk about file sharing a bit boring. So lets talk about the problems people face when attempting to leap technological hurdles instead!

Problem one: How to connect to a network but reduce or segregate the information collected about your specific machine at that time?

Often you don't have to prove anything about yourself on networks, so why sign your name on every piece of data? Wireless networks are all over the place. Once you're given permission and you have that green light to access a network as you wish, you have the leeway to modify your MAC address.


Many systems rely on your MAC address as a 'static' element of your communications. For instance, DHCP servers record your MAC address when supplying an IP address with a lease period. This is because generally your MAC address won't change as you use a network consistently for an hour. In fact in general your MAC address doesn't change when you leave a network and come back a week later. So a DHCP server can keep track of what your most recent IP address was for at least the lease period. However, your MAC address is not a static element of your communications. Changing it often can even provide some benefits. Like controlling the types of traffic your network is routing, or increasing anonymity through diffusion.


Depending on your personal computer there are different ways to change your MAC address. We'll cover the Windows 7 way and a Linux way here:


Using Windows 7:

1. Start-> Control Panel
2. Network and Sharing Center
3. Change Adapter Settings
4. Right click on your adapter of choice (I use my wireless), disable
5. Right click on your adapter of choice (I use my wireless), select Properties
6. Click Configure
7. Click Advanced Tab
8. Look for anything related to your MAC address (varies per driver), modify it and save all your changes.
9. Right click on your adapter of choice (I use my wireless), enable
10. Confirm in a command prompt by running ipconfig /all to determine if your MAC address changes have taken effect (you should also have a new IP addres).

Linux systems:

1. ifdown [interface]
2. Run ifconfig [interface] hw ether [MAC]
3. ifup [interface]
4. Confirm by running ifconfig [interface] to make sure the changes have taken effect.

Finally, connect to your network of choice.

Problem two: We're connected, we feel fresh and clean, but we can't seem to connect to the BitTorrent network?

I use a lot of wireless networks, coffee shops, work, bars, libraries, schools, airports, city, you get the idea. Occasionally these networks will limit the types of connections leaving and entering them in part as a safety precaution for the users on the network. A common type of limitation is port restrictions on everything but port 80/443 traffic.


When you only have web channels available but you still really need to torrent that new release of Back Track, you just need to convert your torrent traffic to web traffic. Using a torrent client which supports proxies is a great way to maximize your throughput and control the type of traffic your moving - not to mention depending on the network you've been given this free reign on it can provide you just that a little more anonymity to the rest of the BitTorrent network. Since you're on a public network, you're fresh and clean, it could be anyone located in your geographical location and connected to the same network. 


Just select any proxy which is available to you that runs on port 80 and configure your torrent client to use this proxy. Ideally you'll have a high bandwidth path to the proxy and you'll be able to encapsulate your torrent traffic into web traffic allowing you to access the BitTorrent network.


Cheers