Automatically randomize port at specified intervals to bypass traffic shaping

[alanfleming]

Many ISPs are using traffic shaping to limit BitTorrent? traffic. This is usually done in hardware, and takes some time to notice that Bt traffic is running on a certain port. Once it is noticed, traffic shaping restricts the port, usually by TCP resets.

If there was an ability to automatically randomize the port used at regular intervals (e.g. every 10, 20, 30, mins, a lower bound will also need to be set) the effects of such traffic shaping could be minimised.

[livings124]

Changing ports while running is already not recommended because of the nature of changing ports - this would most definitely cause more problems than it would solve.

[alanfleming]

That makes no sense at all. It's already allowed and enabled in the UI by pressing the "randomize" button. If it caused problems, it would cause problems either *both* manually or automatically, or *neither*.

Can you explain why, technically, from the app point of view *what* problems it could cause, so perhaps the ticket can be refined into something workable rather than rejected out of hand?

[livings124]

It does cause problems manually, and that button should be used sparingly at best. Regardless, I don't see the demand enough for such a setting.

[User294]

Imho, if someone really needs this, they can use transmission configured to use random port + cron (or whatever task scheduler they prefer) to do process restart. Or something like this. In general such behavior is a bad idea because:

1. It takes some time to start things up and get them running at full speed, etc (so all peers are aware you're here, etc).[BR?
2. This also about to flood P2P network with dead peers which is not a great idea.