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Tag Archive for 'blocking_ips'

uTorrent: Blocking IP Addresses

Published on August 30, 2007 in How-To, Computers and Software. 22 Comments

uTorrent

UPDATE - 11/4/08: Unfortuantely, the site that hosts the file does not allow direct downloads.  You must go to the site to get the download, so my program is pretty much worthless.  I recommend using PeerBlock — which is a spin-off of PeerGuardian but it actually works in Vista/7 (both 32 and 64 bit).

If you know of a link to a direct download, please let me know and I’ll update the application to download it.

UPDATE - 12/3/08: It appears that the URL has been changed.  I was in the middle of updating the program but the URL that it changed too is down as well.  Bluetack is having an issue finding a host for the ipfilter.dat file.  As soon as the download is backup, I’ll release 0.2 with a few additional features.  Thanks.

I recently wrote a little program that you can use to download an ipfilter.dat to block IP addresses when using uTorrent. It really isn’t anything fancy, just saves you the time of downloading it, extracting it, renaming it, and then copying it to the correct location.

The list is downloaded from B.I.S.S. (Bluetack) which is updated every week or so.

Prerequisites:

  • uTorrent already installed
  • Latest version of .NET installed
  • Windows XP or Windows Vista (I’ve tested it on a 32bit Vista machine, and a 32bit XP machine)

Usage:

  • Download ipfilter.dat Updater
  • Extract both of the files included in the .zip to any location on your computer
  • Run ipfilter_updater.exe and click Update
  • Now you need to force uTorrent to use the updated list
    • Quickest way is to close uTorrent, and open it back up.
    • If you are currently downloading some files, you can force a reload in the preferences.
      • Open the Preferences dialog (CTRL-P)
      • Click on Advanced
      • Find ipfiler.enable (should already be set to True)
      • Change it to False, then back to True.
  • To verify the list has loaded
    • Click on the Logger tab in uTorrent
    • You should see: [xx:xx:xx] Loaded ipfiler.dat (# entries)
  • NOTE: You only need to update once a week. The list isn’t updated everyday.

You will see all blocked IP requests on that Logger tab.

Manual Install:

  • Download nipfilter.dat.gz
  • Go to Start->Run and type %APPDATA%\uTorrent\
  • Extract the contents of nipfilter.dat.gz into the folder.
  • Read above on how to force uTorrent to load the new filter.

For added security, check out PeerGuardian 2.

If you experience any issues with my program, feel free to post a comment.