Bitcoin Forum

On another forum i'm on,  someone stated that all the government would need to do is pass laws so ISP's would just block "bitcoin packets" or something. 

Could this theoretically happen?

He cited 2 wiki pages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_shaping

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_v._Comcast

I'm sure this has been talked about, just wondering.

Ask him, why they haven't blocked torrents this way and see how many wikipedia pages he cites then  ;D

they can always try to block bitcoin, but it hardly uses a lot of bandwith so why would an isp piss off customers if they had nothing to gain from blocking? its not like BT where massive volumes of traffic is being used. if they did, you can use a vpn.

That's not the point. The point is if they wanted could they. And the answer is no. They can try, but they already have with torrents and failed. Torrents moved to random ports and traffic got encrypted. With Bitcoin it's even easier because you're dealing with very tiny amount of data.
If push comes to shove, Bitcoins can be exchanged by sending Email

yeah, that comment was a little off topic, but they could still "try" and i doubt we would ever have to come to that level, atm im trying to find this project i learned about a few weeks ago, it was call ip2p or something, it had a .de domain i think, but i cant find it. It could easily be used for bitcoin if memory serves.

I'm sorry but i must correct you, not flaming but just saying you didn't really contribute anything really with your last post, and on top of that you criticize mewantsbitcoins for making a valid point.... I just think that deserves some lawls "

Bitcoin can be easily blocked, but that's why it supports Tor. Tor can't be easily blocked.

Would you not agree that the best long term solution would be to follow the path torrents took by randomizing ports and encrypting traffic rather than rely on Tor?

I don't understand how I criticized anyone and what are you contributing to the topic.


That would make bitcoin harder to block, but for curiosity id like to see if isp's try to block it in the first place, just as a measure to see how corrupt governments and large companies can be.

I would not agree. Bitcoin is for decentralized money. Tor is for anonymity. "Do one thing and do it well."

BitTorrent uses too much traffic, or else it could also use Tor.

Yes relying on Tor would be more of a hassle to get more users to join teh bitcoin train. Its soo slow aswell!

You don't have to use it for web browsing, and for the bitcoin network speed is not a huge issue.

Bandwidth is not a major issue but high latency puts a bitcoin miner at a disadvantage.

if for instance ports 8332-8333 get blocked on ISP level, then if bitcoin moves over to SSL port 443 or secure mail port, forgot which that is, will bitcoin traffic blend in with other encrypted traffic there?

Bitcoin traffic is not encrypted, so no.

The reason ISPs haven't blocked Torrents is because of the current on going debate on net neutrality. Comcast actually throttled and partially block P2P traffic. The FCC said it violated the common carrier clause. Comcast went to appeals court and it was deemed they can if they wanted to block P2P outright since information services isn't a common carrier and that their infrastructure is private property.

Now that most ISP's use DPI it's very easy to monitor/block bitcoin, or any protocol for that matter.
If there's trouble in paradise we need full encryption and protocol obfuscation, either natively or by using I2P or alike.

It would be nice if someone distributed Bitcoin+Tor bundles (or bitcoin+I2P bundles) previously configured. It would be even nicer if the bitcoin protocol could send URLs when broadcasting peers addresses (can it be done right now?). This way, .onion and .i2p URLs could be sent instead of IP addresses.
I think the most authoritarian governments might start trying to block bitcoin by blocking its bootstrap methods...

http://www.i2p2.de/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P