blocking peer-to-peer filesharing programs

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1

I realize this may be a touchy subject. For legal purposes I'll state that I'm making these inquiries as an academic excercize, as well as to enable me to block peer-to-peer programs on my own personal home network. The last thing I'd want to do is rob anyone of their free speech or "rights" to distribute illegal copies of copyrighted material.

Anyway... I'm interested in developing and studying comprehensive firewall and content-filtering techniques for disabling peer-to-peer filesharing applications (e.g. those using gnutella, fasttrack, other napster-style directory and download engines or stacks). If anyone knows of a mailing list / user group that has similar interests, or if you have similar interests, please email me off-list.

Thanks all.

- Dani

2

Since ports and apps are always changing, you would probably have to use a
mixture of ports and layer-7 information. Perhaps using some sort of
content switch or finding people who do is the answer.

For your "home network", may I suggest that you just turn off all the
ports, except for the obvious ones, and then be available to field
complaints (from your children presumably) for other application specific
ports that are justifiable for your network. I think you will find the the
list of "legitimate" ports to be much short then the alternative.

andy

3

I realize this may be a touchy subject. For legal purposes I'll state that
I'm making these inquiries as an academic excercize, as well as to enable me
to block peer-to-peer programs on my own personal home network. The last thing
I'd want to do is rob anyone of their free speech or "rights" to distribute
illegal copies of copyrighted material.

Stating that something is a touchy subject, and proceeding to troll is not
very productive (unless of course you are merely trolling ...) If you are
seeking serious technical advice, prefacing your messages with political
rhetoric is likely going to hamper your efforts.

(and on an unrelated note, 80-column format lines are a nice touch for those
of us reading mail on a CLI mail reader ... pretty much every major mail
client has an option to wrap lines at X columns these days.)

Anyway... I'm interested in developing and studying comprehensive firewall and
content-filtering techniques for disabling peer-to-peer filesharing
applications (e.g. those using gnutella, fasttrack, other napster-style
directory and download engines or stacks). If anyone knows of a mailing list
/user group that has similar interests, or if you have similar interests,
please email me off-list.

If you really want to stop P2P filesharing apps, you had better be prepared
to constantly audit network traffic, and have an ever-expanding list of
blocked ports. Don't forget about the 'old skool' filesharing systems like
NFS, windows shared directories, IRC, FTP/HTTP download sites, etc. From a
technical perspective, I'm not sure there is any single network-level
characteristic that is shared by all P2P systems, and not shared by any other
systems. Communication types vary, ports vary, protocols vary ... there may very
well not be any single feature to look for in network traffic that will block
all P2P traffic at this point in time.

Your best bet may just be to resign yourself to regular research, and make
sure that the ports you're blocking aren't also utilized by 'legitimate'
traffic.

I'm sure, given the variety of networks represented by this audience, there
will be someone with some solid experience in this area, as opposed to my
(admittedly) academic conjecture. Maybe I helped get the ball rolling,
though.

4

I realize this may be a touchy subject. For legal purposes I'll state

Nice try, but NS2.SONYONLINE.NET is a dead giveaway (whois roisman.com). Maybe you'd have better luck trolling on Slashdot?

that I'm making these inquiries as an academic excercize, as well as to
enable me to block peer-to-peer programs on my own personal home network.

Your home at 3960 Ince Blvd, Culver City? How long have you been making your home at an industrial park? Do the movie studios across the street ever cause you any disturbance?

The last thing I'd want to do is rob anyone of their free speech or
"rights" to distribute illegal copies of copyrighted material.

What about distributing legal copies of copyrighted material? Surely the copies I buy, whether I later distribute them illegally or not, are themselves legal copies. Or have I caught you in a Freudian slip of sorts?

Anyway... I'm interested in developing and studying comprehensive
firewall and content-filtering techniques for disabling peer-to-peer
filesharing applications (e.g. those using gnutella, fasttrack, other
napster-style directory and download engines or stacks). If anyone knows

It's called a plug. You pull it out, the power goes off. No more P2P file sharing.

Oh, you want the Internet to continue to operate. I see. Well, at least your choices are now clearly delineated. Have a nice day.