Best practice for controlling BitTorrent traffic on a PacketShaper

Products

• PacketShaper

Issue/Introduction

Due to BitTorrent’s aggressive nature a “never admit” or “discard” policy may not be the best way to control this type of traffic. When classification takes place the first few packets of a flow will fall into the default class until classification has been completed, once classified then the traffic will be dropped and BitTorrent will try again to access the internet. This can result in some BitTorrent traffic reaching its destination.

Resolution

To control BitTorrent’s aggressive connection method’s rather than block the traffic let the traffic connect through a very restrictive policy so that it gets very little bandwidth.

1)      Ensure that you have the BitTorrent plugin installed on to your PacketShaper.

2)      Create a class for BitTorrent traffic and make it an exception class and apply the changes.

3)      Add a matching rule based on the BitTorrent service group and apply the changes.

4)      Add a partition to the class and allocate 1024bps to the partition and make it non-burstable and apply the changes.

5)      Add a Priority policy to the class and make it Priority 0 and apply the changes.

6)      Make sure that you have matching rules for both Outbound and Inbound traffic.