Problems using Bittorrent accross university network?

Question

I have used Azureus for a while now to download stuff (legitimate public domain stuff I might add.) Now I am at university there appears to be something blocking bittorrent use accross the network.

Whenever I try to dowload a torrent connections to peers always fail at the "Waiting for handshake" stage. I have tried dowloading better seeded torrents but it makes no difference. I have also tried changing the port bittorrent uses to see if that makes a difference, but that doesn't work either.

Any ideas how to get my downloads working? I know information about the unviersity's network would be helpful but unfortunately I have none!

Answer 1

The only thing I can think of would be to restrict your connections to one.

Most large companies (University's being the same) will not allow multiple connections because of bandwidth issues.

It worked for me at work.

Answer 2

Quite frankly, I gave up on using Azureus about a year ago for downloading torrents. Too many problems with it. I only use BitComet now.

Answer 3

You may have to open the tcp ports, which may be impossible given your position. Plenty of universities block it entirely as a matter of course because once you get a lot of people doing it, it slows down the whole network. You'll either have to bribe the network tech to allow your ip to be exempt, or switch to another download service.