Peerguardian: The Facts

[Me Here]

Cheers Rambler and Happy WinMXing

[Garo]

used the new patcht but can't connect! hat's going on?

[Me Here]

Garo

get the latest one from here:

https://www.winmxworld.com/tutorials/connection.html

They have been updated.  If you still have problems connecting then please remove WinMX from any allowed rules in any firewalls, especialy XP ones and then restart and let it ask again.

[deadvolvo1]

Since 2000 I've used:

IRC
Napster (the original)
Gnutella (several clients including LimeWire)
AudioGalaxy
FastTrack (KaZaA Lite)
SoulSeek
WinMX
eDonkey2000 (eMule w/ Kademlia enabled)
BitTorrent (Azureus)

To this day I still use:

eMule
Azureus
SoulSeek
mIRC
WinMX

I have downloaded terabytes of copyrighted material. On eMule, my statistics show 1.25TB downloaded since 2003. Shared back, it shows 1.07TB. On BitTorrent, the number is likely much higher. And I can't even begin to think how much IN TOTAL copyrighted data has gone through my Internet connections over the years. I've had multiple dial-up, DSL, cable, and even university LAN connections. NOT ONE SINGLE ENFORCEMENT LETTER FROM ANY INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER, COPYRIGHT OWNER, OR AGENCY ACTING ON THEIR BEHALF. Do you guys want to know my secrets?

1) Not openly sharing "bait", i.e. mainstream stuff anybody can get anywhere
2) Carefully choosing which P2P networks and clients to use
3) A REAL hardware firewall / router (Linksys RV042)
4) Since 2004, PeerGuardian

I'm not here just to defend PeerGuardian, although some of what I'm about to say is in PeerGuardian's defense. My intention is mainly to add some thoughts to the discussion that seem to have escaped the rest of the thread:

1) If you use many P2P applications at once, including ones that don't have their own IP filter, it's easier to use PeerGuardian rather than rely on several different IP filters and blocklists to be updated and functioning properly. SoulSeek does not have its own blocklist capability for example, whereas eMule and Azureus do. In any case, not all IP filters properly implement their blocklists.

2) WinMX like any other network has its own strengths and weaknesses. While PG may not be the greatest or even necessary on WinMX, it may be necessary on other networks that offer certain unique content and features that WinMX does not offer.

3) PeerGuardian takes some of the burden of blocking bad IP ranges off of the P2P applications, which in my experience are often a lot less stable than PeerGuardian. PeerGuardian  is also more efficient than Azureus' JAVA-based IP filter.

4) PeerGuardian can run when your P2P applications are not running, continuing to block persistent and aggressive connection attempts and notify you.

5) Nobody said you had to use every single blocklist in existence! Choose the ones that are applicable to you, and be informed about what they contain.

6) WinMX is a unique network, and likewise the methods of attacks here are unique as well. What is true here isn't true everywhere.

7) If your PC is fast enough, the CPU usage of PeerGuardian doesn't matter much or at all.

Thanks for your explanation of the attacks on WinMX, and your contribution to help raise awareness of what is going on behind the scenes.

-- a long time P2P user

[daxure]

Thanx deadvolvo1 for the truth

[Forested665]

honestly all i can ask is... what can peer guardian do that a decent software level firewall or an el cheapo router from walmart can do....

[GhostShip]

I hope Daxure by your words to  Deadvolvo1 your not implying we have been less than honest as this is really not the case, much effort has been put into trying to press BISS who make the PG lists, into keeping them up to date as that has been our major complaint with PG using their lists.

We also had a few complaints of WinMX user blocking, and not any old users but our site staff, at one point and a peer cache or two in previous times so we know many addresses on the BISS lists are there incorrectly, PG wasnt able to detect or block the flooders in an efficient way and so a solution was developed specific for our network.

I fully agree it may be useful on another network but its a hindrance here and useless anyway without our WinMX specific block lists, it also features a design flaw in that it will block ports being accessed from a blocked IP and allow them to time out but in the meanwhile the attackers are trying to connect on other ports and thus they are able to cause crashes as the client runs out of available ports to allocate after being bombarded for a few minutes, this I have seen for myself, turning off PG resolved the issue, so whilst it may be useful elsewhere its not something anyone here would advise to use.

[tower]

I run PG2.  I have the following WinMX lists added to it: https://www.winmxworld.com/files/block_list.txt and of course the: https://www.winmxworld.com/files/allow.txt  using the list manager you can opt to NOT USE any of the 5 lists they provide from the Source Forge site.  I have no idea what all the fuss is about, but I do have an issue with the WinMX Community patch 1 which I will cover in a new thread.   As I use bit torrent (Vuze client in advanced (Azureus) view more and more these days, I need Peer Guardian 2 to keep it from being attacked and as I say I find no problem at all with using it and certainly never had the unstable connections you talk about.

However the recent addition of UPNP in WinMX has caused me big problems with my D-Link router.   More on the new thread.   Rigmar Radio

[wonderer]

Why is this thread revived after more then 12 month?

[Forested665]

because a user had an "issue" with peer gaurdian, the blocklist, and the patch.
it was resolved here:
https://forum.winmxworld.com/index.php?topic=7205.30/topicseen.html