How to block P2P via router?

[rosilani]

How do i configure sky broadband (Sagem adsl router) to block all p2p/torrent traffic? Is there an option in the router settings to define a global policy? All pcs connect either wirelessly or via lan straight to the router.

[Alan b]

Find out which ports P2P traffic use and block those perhaps ?

[rosilani]

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately p2p uses any open ports of which there can be up to 65000 i believe so blocking a certain range will only then mean that the p2p traffic will be diverted to another open port.

What we have been trying to do so far is assign static IPs for our PCs, then create a rule blocking all traffic for all IPs that connect thereafter. Then we will have to create another rule to allow access for those IPs to certain ports as in web, pop, smtp, etc. This seems to be the best option we have at the moment although it is untested as yet.

I was just hoping there was an easier way. perhaps sky can identify what is p2p and stop it directly, would sky have that option?

[IWasNotTheEnemy]

in a word, no...

[Undecided Adrian]

What are you trying to stop and why?

There may be a different way of trying to accomplish what you are after.

[Monday]

You could set the P2P to use port say 5180 and block that?

[rosilani]

What are you trying to stop and why?

There may be a different way of trying to accomplish what you are after.

We have a lot of people connecting to the internet and a couple of them use p2p which they leave on all day, not only is it hogging the bandwidth and making it impossible to use the internet for anything but it is also flooding the router with requests and causing it to drop the connection constantly. it is a nightmare. i dont even want to think about what the landlord will say once we have gone over the cap. we have tried to explain this to these guys but they dont care and just do what they want without regard for anyone. Unfortunately we do not have access to their pcs so we have to figure out someway to bypass them and just block the p2p usage within the router settings.

[Undecided Adrian]

If they use wireless you could use MAC address filtering on the router, only "permitted" network cards that have their MAC addresses on the router are then allowed to use the router.

It's a bit of a blunt weapon as they will be blocked off completely but it will let everybody on the permitted list use the internet.

[rosilani]

If they use wireless you could use MAC address filtering on the router, only "permitted" network cards that have their MAC addresses on the router are then allowed to use the router.

It's a bit of a blunt weapon as they will be blocked off completely but it will let everybody on the permitted list use the internet.

Thanks, we had considered that, its a bit mean to totally block them off, also they will then be continually restarting the router and what not to find out why they cant connect.

Would our above solution work? is it possible to block certain IPs to all ports and on top of that allow them to only access certain ports? would an 'allow' override a 'deny'?

[audioslim]

Yes it's how any business would have their firewall configured.
It's a pain to do really but the only way to block everything, is to only allow want you want to allow, browsing, messenger perhaps, and so on outgoing ports only. Disable UPNP and away you go..

You can find the ports most apps use on the internet quite easilly.

Slim