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Any Peer Guardian Alternative For OSX


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I finally switched my Bit Torrent/File Server over to OSX and I have Peer Guardian installed but I don't like it. The ease of use is gone when compared to the windows version, so I'm wondering is there a alternative. I tried a Google search but I can't seem to find others.

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Peerguardian's a useless piece of {censored} <_<

 

So is any other piece of software that claims to 'Block the RIAA & MPAA's evil IP address"

 

Here's a rant on it i wrote awhile ago. First sentence of each paragraph's the only important thing really.

Peerguardian seems to be a pretty popular tool for people to use to try and protect themselves from having their IP discovered by the RIAA, MPAA, or whatever other organization they rationally or irrationally fear. However, Peerguardian, Protowall, and any other tool that works by using blocklists to block IP’s is useless to prevent people from discovering what you are downloading for several reason.

 

It’s easy to change your IP. I mean, really easy. With some ISP’s - the one’s that give out Dynamic IP’s, all you have to do is disconnect your router for a short period of time, then turn it back on. Congratulation’s - your IP has now changed.

 

Though, some ISP’s have Static IP’s that remain the same no matter how long you disconnect your router. In this case, it’s still really easy to change your IP. Just use a proxy. There’s thousands of free proxies avilable on the internet. Any of them can be picked at random for an individual, or even a corporation such as the MPAA to use. Again - not very hard for someone to do. Unless you block everything from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255, your bound to miss a proxy out there. And if you do block every ip from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255, you’ll have bigger problems then trying to avoid detection, like connecting to the internet in the first place.

 

But, lets pretend that both of those options are unavilable to you. In this case there is still a few things that can be done to change your IP. You - or any corporation - can get a new ISP. While this isnt a preferrable option to do, it is possible - every location has at least 2 ISP’s, even if the other ISP is dial-up. While not optimal, you can still connect to Bittorrent, FastTrack, Gnutella, or any other file-sharing protocol at will. Alternatly, instead of buying a new connection, and you still want to get in a new pool of IP addresses, it’s easy for someone to take a laptop down to their local Starbucks and connect to the wireless network. Again - in a new pool of IP ranges that is most likely to not be in the filter list for Protowall or Peerguardian.

 

If your trying to prevent yourself from being discovered and are using Bittorrent, you need to read up on how the bittorrent protocol works. When using bittorrent, you have some sort of tracker - whether it be the traditional server-based tracker or something on the DHT network - and clients connecting to the swarm. When connecting to the tracker, you announce what pieces you have and what pieces you want. Now, lets say the MPAA wants to connect to your computer, to send you a piece of data, and at the same time, harvest your IP, they will connect to your computer. However, Peerguardian will then say “Nu uh, nope, sorry” and refuse to allow the person to send or recieve any data. Your existance on the swarm is still known. Furthermore, with the development of Peer Exchange, people dont have to directly connect to you to find out that you exist on the torrent - they can find out from other clients that you exist.

 

Furthermore, the blocklists that are used by Peerguardian are maintained by a third party, who adds IP ranges to the blocklists because he wants to. See the uTorrent.com entry to the blocklist for example. utorrent.com is the primary website of the popular bittorrent client, uTorrent. However it is on the blocklist for Peerguardian and Protowall. It was placed on the blocklist by the admin in charge of the lists, after the uTorrent-Retspan mess, and his dislike for closed-source software mixed together, forming an unneeded entry onto the blocklist.

 

Peerguardian’s also a waste of system resources. Sure, modern systems can have gig’s of ram - 4GB max with most 32bit motherboards for example - but that does not mean that system resources should be wasted if it wasnt necessary - if that was the case, then malware that uses up cpu cycles would be tolerated. If your wondering how it wastes system resources, see the paragraph’s above outlining why the concept that Peerguardian uses is useless.

 

There are some server-side idea’s that can be manipulated to work in a similar way to Peerguardian. The primary idea that seems to be gaining ground is using the .htaccess file to block access to IP ranges. This is a bad. It will place an unnecessary Strain on the server by having it check every IP that connects to it. And again 0it is incredibly easy to change your IP.

 

However, the concept of blocking or allowing access based on IP addresses is not a bad concept - firewall’s often work on this - by blocking all access unless it’s on a whitelist. This is a very good concept for security. However it is not a good idea to do this when using file-sharing protocol’s such as bittorrent that utilize large numbers of connections. Having your firewall check every connection and tcp packet sent and recieved will place an unnecessary load on your computer, and in almost all cases, render your computer unusable.

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