The news providers offer SSL to protect your privacy not to evade shaping

Yes they do

http://www.giganews.com/benefits.html

256-bit SSL Encryption
Take advantage of the same secure connectivity used by banks, retailers, and countless other online services. 256-bit SSL Encrypted Usenet� service keeps usernames and passwords secure, helps aid against identity theft, and can help bypass artificial bandwidth limits.

In reply to a post by mrstella:

The news providers offer SSL to protect your privacy not to evade shaping

Yes they do

http://www.giganews.com/benefits.html

256-bit SSL Encryption
Take advantage of the same secure connectivity used by banks, retailers, and countless other online services. 256-bit SSL Encrypted Usenet� service keeps usernames and passwords secure, helps aid against identity theft, and can help bypass artificial bandwidth limits.

Then they're doing some creative advertising, SSL is an exercise in futility when it's going to the same servers

In reply to a post by anon123456:

It's about 2 hours 40 mins of uploading at max speed.

Most of that will go on p2p, you don't think a p2p network will readily suck down that much data given the opportunity

i dont think you fully understand how p2p networks work...

you can choose and set the speed that your connection uploads at on p2p networks..

so a p2p network will only 'suck' upload bandwidth at the level that you decide....

unless you are using p2p networks and have not configured the settings,and if thats the case then i dont think you should qualify for an upload increase as you do not manage your connection properly..

In reply to a post by djfunkdup:

i dont think you fully understand how p2p networks work...

you can choose and set the speed that your connection uploads at on p2p networks..

so a p2p network will only 'suck' upload bandwidth at the level that you decide....

unless you are using p2p networks and have not configured the settings,and if thats the case then i dont think you should qualify for an upload increase as you do not manage your connection properly..

I understand perfectly well, a lot of people leave their torrent uncapped, especially when they're not using their connection.

Anyone who does any serious amount of downloading over bit-torrent have switched to private trackers which maintain overall upload/download ratios so it's important to seed and in some cases where rules are strict it actually encourages aggressive seeding.

In reply to a post by pete_thomson:

DPI has been available for non encrypted traffic for some time, but if it's SSL then they can't use DPI so in that instance they simply look at the port carrying the traffic and hit the typical ones for SSL.

I know that usenet is typically port 563 SSL but several providers look like they offer SSL over ports 80 and 443 as well which will probably throw that off as they can't block what might be web traffic.

I know nothing about torrents so is there a common port?? If so, I'm guessing again that will be the one that gets hit.

Well some private trackers use SSL for torrents so it's possible with some torrent clients, there's no set ports for data transmition, you can randomize the port in most good torrent clients.

Yet I'm sure it's still possible to tell, they can't monitor destination like for newsgroups since it's just other peers/seeds inside the cluster, but I'm fairly sure some kind of packet inspection can work this out. Not from my experience on VM but other ISPs.

I can get 6MB/sec from torrents though and peak at about 180k/s up so if VM are traffic shaping 50mbit at the moment it's definitely not capturing SSL torrents, I suspect that traffic shaping is in place like their site says but simply not being triggered due to the large amount of capacity available and low 50mbit take up.

In reply to a post by anon123456:

Well some private trackers use SSL for torrents so it's possible with some torrent clients, there's no set ports for data transmition, you can randomize the port in most good torrent clients.

Yet I'm sure it's still possible to tell, they can't monitor destination like for newsgroups since it's just other peers/seeds inside the cluster, but I'm fairly sure some kind of packet inspection can work this out. Not from my experience on VM but other ISPs.

I can get 6MB/sec from torrents though and peak at about 180k/s up so if VM are traffic shaping 50mbit at the moment it's definitely not capturing SSL torrents, I suspect that traffic shaping is in place like their site says but simply not being triggered due to the large amount of capacity available and low 50mbit take up.

Nothing is being shaped yet but when they switch it on yes it will be capturing obfuscated torrents.

Remember that it's only the communication with the tracker that uses SSL, the comms between the peers use normal, weak Bittorrent encryption and in any event there are many ways to spot P2P.

I figured something like this was the case. I'm going to keep a close eye on my connection when I get the additional upload and see if anything is being obviously throttled.

things using non default ports are the first things I will check. some isps have a tendancy to assume anything not on a mainstream port is p2p hiding. BT got caught doing that on the samknows tests before samknows and ofcom hidden the results.

In reply to a post by anon123456:

I can get 6MB/sec from torrents though and peak at about 180k/s up so if VM are traffic shaping 50mbit at the moment it's definitely not capturing SSL torrents, I suspect that traffic shaping is in place like their site says but simply not being triggered due to the large amount of capacity available and low 50mbit take up.

I think you're confused about SSL encryption in regards to torrent sites, they use SSL to encrypt your connection with the website, not the torrent download.

In reply to a post by BlackAle:

In reply to a post by anon123456:

I can get 6MB/sec from torrents though and peak at about 180k/s up so if VM are traffic shaping 50mbit at the moment it's definitely not capturing SSL torrents, I suspect that traffic shaping is in place like their site says but simply not being triggered due to the large amount of capacity available and low 50mbit take up.

I think you're confused about SSL encryption in regards to torrent sites, they use SSL to encrypt your connection with the website, not the torrent download.

No, some clients support encrypted connections to the tracker. Both the tracker and the clients have to support it. Some private torrent sites force the use of specific clients and force SSL connections both to the website and for torrent connections to the tracker.

As someone else pointed out, I'm not sure if connections from peers to other peers is encrypted, maybe not, need to do some more research on that, if they're not I'm sure they can be.