Is it possible to block P2P / Torrents at the Router ?

Quigs Snr · 17-09-2007 06:33PM #1

Rent out a couple of rooms, one user is killing me with non-stop P2P and Torrent downloads. Currently using NTL linked to a Linksys WRT54G router.

What I want to know is if there are any Routers I can buy that will allow me to disable torrent and P2P downloads (this user is pretty savvy so I don't think disabling particular ports will work for long - thus I need a robust solution). I don't think my Linksys will do it, but at this rate it will be worth any money to ensure I get something in place that allows everyone to use the internet reasonably. The alternative solution is eviction for the tenant in question, but I'd like that to be a last resort obviously !

Any suggestions for anything I can do in hardware and software, welcome !

Cake Fiend · 17-09-2007 06:41PM

Have you specifically told the tenant to stop leeching? Because that should be the first step. Bear in mind that you could possibly be held liable for any piracy that might be going on - this could be a way of softening the demand.

Other than that, the Linksys can probably only do basic port filtering, if even that. You might be able to set it up to block everything by default and open only the ports needed for web, skype, etc, but that could get to be a pain in the hole if the line is used for gaming, etc.

You might consider using something like smoothwall or IPCop to keep track of bandwidth use and give yourself more control over the connection (very handy if you have an old PC lying around).

bushy... · 17-09-2007 06:53PM

Not much point blocking ports to control it as some p2p will use common ports to "get out".

NutJob · 17-09-2007 09:38PM

http://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?pid=48720

A transparent proxy will stop p2p if your technical enough to set it up.

Be warned if you dont know what your doing you can break your router perminantly so read up on it more.

bushy... · 17-09-2007 10:00PM

What you really need is L7 filtering , if you use a proxy you will probably have to deny things tunnelling through using CONNECTs & going to numeric ips instead of domain names, will probably break skype and a few more though.

If its squid these will do the above :
acl numeric_IPs url_regex [0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+
http_access deny CONNECT numeric_IPs all

Tar.Aldarion · 18-09-2007 12:54PM

Just tell him to cut back.

Is it possible to block P2P / Torrents at the Router ?

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