STUDY OF ENCRYPTED AND NON-ENCRYPTED BITTORRENT TRAFFIC

摘要

Over recent years, Peer to Peer (P2P) traffic over thernInternet has increased dramatically. P2P file sharingrnapplications, such as Napster, Gnutella, KaZaA,rnBitTorrent, Skype and PPLive, have experiencedrntremendous success among end users. Recent statisticsrnsuggests that P2P traffic accounts towards 70% of Internetrntraffic. P2P traffic becomes a major concern for InternetrnService Provider (ISP). Some ISPs have implementedrnshaping or blocking techniques in order to stem the flowrnof P2P traffic over their networks, which not only affectrnend users, but also the companies who develop P2Prnapplications. Although P2P protocols can be used forrntransferring illegal content they have great potential forrnlegitimate users, especially those in the business world. Inrnthis paper, we examine both encrypted and non-encryptedrnnetwork traffic from BitTorrent, one of the most popularrnP2P protocols. First hardware and software requirementsrnfor this study are described. Secondly a torrent’s life cyclernand data capture from the Internet are explained. Thenrnencrypted and non-encrypted traffic are compared andrnanalysed. Our investigations show that P2P is almostrnimpossible to hide as not every packet is encrypted in thernencrypted stream.