[DavidGGG]

I'm surprised no one has written anything here about the possibilities to use ED2K/KAD without the risc of the IP being visible.

First, there is an alternative to eMule called iMule which apparently is similar to aMule and uses I2P for safety but apparently only supports the KAD part, not ED2K.

Or you can use eMule over a VPN connection. There are lots of providers of this for around €5/month, but the one I first tried doesn't support port forwarding and thus I was lowID in ED2K and Firewalled (with "Buddy") in KAD. Most VPN networks are like that.

I've found only one exception: this VPN provider which allows you to set up port forwarding. Costs €10/month unfortunately, or €0,5/GB. Speed was high (hundreds of kB/s).

An alternative to VPN is the Tor network, but I doubt it supports port forwarding.

I also saw this thread on using "VPnetMon" to make sure it doesn't switch to the ordinary connection if the VPN is down. It seems like a good idea to have (I've read several times how VPN connections may fail occasionally, and then Windows is smart enough to automatically switch to the unsafe ordinary internet connection..) VPNetMon works very well. Be sure to install Microsoft .NET 2.0 first. And I set "soft shutd time" to 10 secs for eMule (at first it was 500ms, then eMule shut down so fast it corrupted the known.met file).

And regarding discussion if PPTP is safe, I've concluded that it is (provided it uses MS-CHAP v2), when it comes to being invisible from authorities while sharing files (the weak part, as I understand it, is if you use a too simple password and a hacker attacks). Many VPN providers also have IPsec which is apparently safer than PPTP.

An alternative (or complement) to VPNetMon could be to set up your firewall to just allow connections to local IP in the range 1.2.0.0 to 1.15.255.255, but not all firewalls can manage that, and it can be cumbersome to handle IPv6.

Mu conclusion is that for me, eMule + Ivacy + VPNetMon is the best solution, with PPTP or IPsec.

This post has been edited by DavidGGG: 10 May 2009 - 09:16 AM

[xylo9]

Thank you David for this info, which is very pertinent nowadays. I hope others will share their knowledge and experience on this subject here too.

When will emule include this feature?

[Zoness]

VPN for eMule....interesting. I had considered it for torrents but I had never thought about it for eMule I might have to do some personal investigation, thanks for the info!

[DavidGGG]

Nice to see there's an interest in this thread. I'm not the only one with these problems, it seems.

If anyone finds any more VPN providers besides Ivacy which allow port forwarding, please post it here.

I asked Ivacy if it is possible to set it up so that it uses MS-CHAP v2 (and avoid MS-CHAP v1, since this e g allows sending user name and password unencrypted !!! - read the link to Microsoft's own site above, if you don't believe it!) and I got a positive reply with instructions which I posted in their forum. You then have to use Windows' built-in "dialer" instead of the one Ivacy provides, but there's actually one more benefit with this: Windows' dialer can be set up to automatically re-dial on loss of connection (I set it to 3 secs). I've run it now for a week, get 400-450kB/s down, and it works around the clock.

If I run eMule at high speed my browser can get a bit slow, I've seen the same thing when I used a router and I suspect it might be because the router, like VPN, possibly limits amount of allowed connections (this is just my guess, but I've investigated everything else..).

And BTW a piece of info for P2P newbies: Port forwarding is a good idea for most P2P (torrents, SoulSeek etc) because it will increase download speed. Without port forwarding in VPN, you get the same drawback as if you have a firewall which you forgot to open up the ports in, or a router for which you forgot to do port forwarding.

[xylo9]

Sorry to ask this silly question, but... don't you get the vpn via your usual ADSL connection? Must you actually use the phone to dial to the vpn service? (if not, what's the dialer for?)

[PacoBell]

xylo9, on May 17 2009, 02:11 PM, said:

don't you get the vpn via your usual ADSL connection?

No. Some ISPs require you to "dialup" to them via the PPPoE protocol, but that's not VPN. Virtual, yes. Network, yes. Private, definitely NOT.

Quote

Must you actually use the phone to dial to the vpn service? (if not, what's the dialer for?)

No, no phone. It's a PPP over Ethernet. The dialer is just an abstract construct of a modem. It doesn't actually de/modulate anything.

[fabtar]

There are other VPN service out there:
http://ipredator.se/
it is only in beta stage but is owned by pirate's bay guys.
And I have also good feedbacks about SwissVPN
http://www.swissvpn.net/

I have also suggested "relakks" in the past but I have not heard feedbacks about recently.

[RRT4]

DavidGGG, on May 7 2009, 06:08 AM, said:

I'm surprised no one has written anything here about the possibilities to use ED2K/KAD without the risc of the IP being visible.

First, there is an alternative to eMule called iMule which apparently is similar to aMule and uses I2P for safety but apparently only supports the KAD part, not ED2K.

it uses kad to connect, publish and search for keywords/files but clearly creates a parallel network that has a minimal fraction of the available files in the 'emule kad' network
things could change if emule windows implement the optional connection to the i2p network (which has recently seen a small growth - around 2000 i2prouter connected to the network on average)

[the Doctor]

xylo9, on May 18 2009, 12:11 AM, said:

Sorry to ask this silly question, but... don't you get the vpn via your usual ADSL connection? Must you actually use the phone to dial to the vpn service? (if not, what's the dialer for?)

No, you can use your current subspace connections to the internet to let the dailer make a connection to the vpn provider.

[fabtar]

RRT4, on May 18 2009, 12:30 PM, said:

DavidGGG, on May 7 2009, 06:08 AM, said:

I'm surprised no one has written anything here about the possibilities to use ED2K/KAD without the risc of the IP being visible.

First, there is an alternative to eMule called iMule which apparently is similar to aMule and uses I2P for safety but apparently only supports the KAD part, not ED2K.

Have you tried Imule recently?How does it work?Time ago it had stability problems.(And I fear there are not so much users at the moment).

[xylo9]

So if i understand it correctly, this vpn provider who wants 5 or 10$ a month will be a kind of proxy who will connect to the emule network on my behalf (in a sense) and encrypt the connection between me and him ?

Surely there are ways to make every emule client behave that way, thus avoiding this proxy and this expense for everyone.

[Andu]

xylo9, on May 18 2009, 11:26 PM, said:

Surely there are ways to make every emule client behave that way, thus avoiding this proxy and this expense for everyone.

Yea there is but not without significant overhead. Meaning you have to expect global download speed to go down by at least 50%.

[fabtar]

xylo9, on May 18 2009, 10:26 PM, said:

So if i understand it correctly, this vpn provider who wants 5 or 10$ a month will be a kind of proxy who will connect to the emule network on my behalf (in a sense) and encrypt the connection between me and him ?

Surely there are ways to make every emule client behave that way, thus avoiding this proxy and this expense for everyone.

With the other solutions you have to route other's guy data traffic, all the p2p clients became (about) a proxy for the others.
No one is able to find out the real source for a file but may this "routing" be illegal too?How knows?

In fact using(and paying) a foreign proxy you can use consolidated p2p clients with no overhead, full speed, and you can anonymize browsing, mail and other p2p clients as well.

This post has been edited by fabtar: 22 May 2009 - 06:51 AM

[DavidGGG]

fabtar, are you sure any of ipredator, swissvpn and relakks support port forwarding (or some other solution that let you forward the ports eMule use)? I haven't seen any statements from them that they do. VPN providers without this feature there are bunches of.

Regarding keeping costs down for VPN: One way could be to use it vigorously for a month then pause for a month or two. Or you can share a VPN account with friends, as long as only one uses it at a time (maybe hard to implement for eMule in reality since eMule requires being online for long durations; this idea is more useful for other P2P clients like torrents and SoulSeek)

And for newbies on VPN (in short): Instead of connecting directly from your PC to point X, you establish one connection from your PC to the VPN provider, and one connection from the VPN provider to point X. The first connection is protected by encryption (usually PPTP). At point X (and if anyone taps into the communication from the VPN provider to point X), your IP is not seen, it has been replaced by the VPN provider's IP. So the first connection is protected by encryption, the second by anonymity. The most common use of VPN I think is if an employee is working at home and wants access to the company's intranet. When you connect to VPN in Windows, you use an icon that looks very much like the old times when you dialled over the phone line. VPN requires that you already have an active and working internet connection which the first part of the VPN connection can use.

[fabtar]

DavidGGG, on May 22 2009, 05:59 PM, said:

fabtar, are you sure any of ipredator, swissvpn and relakks support port forwarding (or some other solution that let you forward the ports eMule use)? I haven't seen any statements from them that they do. VPN providers without this feature there are bunches of.

Regarding keeping costs down for VPN: One way could be to use it vigorously for a month then pause for a month or two. Or you can share a VPN account with friends, as long as only one uses it at a time (maybe hard to implement for eMule in reality since eMule requires being online for long durations; this idea is more useful for other P2P clients like torrents and SoulSeek)

Relakks for sure gave a unique IP per user but I don't know if relakks is the best choice anymore. Relakks doesn't need to masquerade your IP behind a NAT.So you look like you are directly on the internet, no port forwarding needed, HighID is assured.
I have understood that the other VPN services works in the same way.
5$/months is not a big fee and your idea about sharing the connection adds too much complexity. The best way to share a line with friends is simply to build a p2p-pc for common use and left it always connected.
Your friends could take downloads manually once a week (for example).
About sharing your emule with friends I suggest to look for emule's webinterface feature.

[ArkOuroboros]

I demoed Ivacy and I liked it a lot. I tried Relakks when you could have 30 day trials of it but I found there were a few US websites I couldn't even ping like myspace.com, which worked fine on my standard connection. I'm glad to hear that Relakks works well with ed2k, I hope it works with bittorrent as well. I understand that you need to fetch a new IP on each connect. That would make things somewhat difficult for me on some trackers I would have to constantly re-login. Is there a workaround for this?

[DavidGGG]

I finally found one more VPN provider which have port forwarding:

https://blog.perfect...ort-forwarding/

They give you 5 ports to forward. Unfortunately, they cost €25/month.

And there's a rumour that Anonine.com are going to get port forwarding soon. They cost only about €4/month!

I'm pretty sure Relakks are just an ordinary VPN provider without port forwarding, and as an eMule user, I wouldn't use that.

One other thing to check when selecting VPN provider is that they don't store trafic info. Ivacy, Perfect-Privacy and Anonine don't save logs. One VPN provider which does store logs is SwissVPN, but being Swiss, they might ignore requests from authorities in other countries. Relakks state that they will do their best to avoid giving logs and subscriber info to authorities, but they do store the data.

[DavidGGG]

I'm testing Anonine now. They forward all ports over 1024, give you your own IP to keep, cost only €4/month, and support MS-CHAP-v2. I have only tried it a few hours but there were no problems with eMule, and with a popular torrent I got 350kB/s down and 150kB/s up, which is much more than I ever got at Ivacy and for a much smaller fee. And as far as I've heard it's supposed to be relatively stable. Only reason to stick to Ivacy is their usenet server, and if you want to appear as being in a different country (for example to be allowed to listen to BBC local radio..).

Your input is welcome Semm. Sound good if Relakks also is useful. I have no problems with the for me totally bug-free VPNetMon, and I did mention the firewall approach in my initial post. If you use Ivacy, you definitely need either of these additional protections since it crashes a few times each week (IPsec a couple of times per day for me), at least it's been that way from summer until now.

PS I found someone who disagrees that IPsec is safer than PPTP, at least the Windows' implementation of it: http://www.webhostin...lnerabilty.html

[fox88]

Semm, on 14 October 2009 - 12:30 AM, said:

that way you will loose all your download queue positions

Depends on the time passed since shutdown.

[torpon]

How can you get better position in queues by restarting?

Cheers