I very rarely write about bittorrent because for the past few months I’ve only been getting my stuff from RapidShare file hosting. As you know, RapidShare has a storage capacity of several petabytes (a petabyte is a million gigabytes) of files and you could almost everything there. I have a RapidShare Premium account and I used to get maximum download speed. However, for the past few weeks, the maximum download speed that I’ve been getting has been pretty bad, and now they’ve reduced the download limit from 10 gigabyte a day to 80 gigabyte a month. That’s like only 2.66gb of download per day! I have a 1.5mbps download speed and according to calculation, I can download as much as 12GB per day. RapidShare system is getting really absurd so I am turning to BitTorrent.

I downloaded and installed the latest version of uTorrent v1.8.1, got a torrent file from IP Torrents with 1051 seeders and only 34 leechers. With that numbers, I should be downloading at maximum speed but I am only getting less than 3kbps!
Bypass torrent throttling
Double checked uTorrent settings and applied half connections limit patch, still no improvement. All this while I knew that my ISP TM Net Streamyx has been throttling P2P connections and I guess I’m their victim too. They claim to have a hardware to detect and throttle certain kinds of traffic such as p2p (for e.g. BitTorrent) in an effort to save their bandwidth that we have rightfully paid for. After spending hours trying to find out how to bypass bittorrent throttling, I found a simple solution.

Well the simplest way is to use VPN. VPN establishes an encrypted connection behind SSL security to encrypt BitTorrent and taking out traffic shapers. Last year I’ve already mentioned a few VPN companies such as XLCore, IdealVPN, HostCK and SecureIX but they’ve all closed down, leaving only BolehVPN that is capable to unthrottle your P2P connections. Currently BolehVPN has a total 14 servers located at Luxembourg, Sweden, United States and United Kingdom for you to choose from. If you want to watch online TV from Veoh or Hulu, simply connect to the US VPN.
Bypass bittorrent throttling
Don’t look down on BolehVPN because the fact that they started operating since March 2007 until today already prove that they really “boleh” (Boleh means Can). I signed up for a 60 days VPN account to test it out and here’s a video showing how fast it hits my maximum download speed through BolehVPN. (This is my first attempt in making a video presentation, promise that it’ll be much better next time :P )

Another factor that contributes to the speed of bittorrent downloading is the amount of seeders and leechers. Some public trackers offers horrible amount of seeders which would make your download really slow. To solve this problem, BolehVPN provides access to a very popular private tracker (IPTorrents) with free leech! That means you can download without maintaining a good 1:1 ratio (although it’d be nice that you upload as well).

Other than providing VPN service, BolehVPN is also one of the very few providers of game servers in Malaysia. We’re actually in the midst of configuring the first ZombieMod server in Malaysia. Reason why I wanted a ZombieMod server hosted in Malaysia is because the routing done by our ISP TM Net is really bad and I get like 200-300 ping when playing CSS on servers overseas. If you want to check it out, here’s the IP and Port: 202.71.97.88:25555

Back to VPN, I have a US VPN account from Witopia that costs $39.99 per year but the connection is pretty slow and Veoh has blocked the IP saying “Veoh is no longer available in Anonymous Proxy”. I’ve also tested 1 month China VPN from BCRChina and it’s even worse as a lot of pages couldn’t load. So for a mere RM1 (US$0.25) a day at BolehVPN, you can download from BitTorrent with maximum full speed without being throttled and also watch online TV from Veoh, Hulu and etc by connecting to their VPN located in US (You have 14 VPN servers to choose from). A normal pirated DVD cost RM5 and Blu-Ray at RM12, I may as well spend the money on BolehVPN to have freedom in downloading whatever I want using P2P.

As part of the Christmas giveaway, I will be giving out 3 BolehVPN accounts valid for 125 days to 3 Malaysians. You must be subscribed to this website’s newsletter via FeedBurner or Feedblitz and then leave a comment. First 3 Malaysians that leaves a comment will get it. Readers from other country, please don’t be despair because I assure you that I have more giveaways coming very soon.

You can give BolehVPN a try if you’re a heavy P2P downloader that’s being throttled by your ISP. Just so you know, I gain nothing whether you subscribe to BolehVPN or not. I am just sharing with you based on my experience with BolehVPN.

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[tags]bolehvpn, bittorrent, throttle, vpn, torrent[/tags]