Blocking Bearshare

December 4, 2005 4:11 PM

Is there an effective way to block the use of Bearshare and Kazaa on my home network? I suspect there should be a way to diable the ports used by these programs but I can't find any definitive info. The router is a Linksys WRT54GS. Thanks
posted by queue_strategy to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Brief googling suggests that Kazaa uses port 1214 and Gnutella (Bearshare) uses ports 6346-7. There's probably ways around it, but blocking these ports may work. But I'm not sure why you'd want to block ports. Is someone using your bandwidth to P2P off a different computer?
posted by drpynchon at 4:21 PM on December 4, 2005

Uninstall them?
posted by sophist at 4:37 PM on December 4, 2005

Not sure about the Linksys stock firmware, but there are third party firmware developers that provide this sort of functionality.
posted by purephase at 6:05 PM on December 4, 2005

Response by poster: Per the comments: yes I have deleted them on various machines, but they keep coming back -- such is life with teenagers in the house :-)
The Linksys firmware apparently does not have the functionality to directly control these apps or block their associated ports.
I do remember reading about some of these alternate firmwares. I'll check them out. Thanks.
posted by queue_strategy at 6:36 PM on December 4, 2005

The stock firmware doesn't have the ability to block ports, but it does have the ability to forward ports. Simply forward the ports for Kazaa and Bearshare to a non-existant IP address and that should do the trick until they learn how to change the stock ports in Kazaa. You'll want to make sure that UPnP is disabled as well.

The stock firmware will also allow you to set the time that specific PCs on your network can have access to the internet. I don't know if that helps your situation any.
posted by fatbobsmith at 7:51 PM on December 4, 2005

Given that you have some form of authority over these teenagers, exercising such seems a preferable option. Abuse it and lose it, after all. Removing internet access for a few days tends to be quite effective at blocking undesired activity.

Or, you could get a little creative. Throttle their bandwidth to something intolerable for P2P networks, like 14.4kbps. Them youngsters can't appreciate a bit of patience for the internets!
posted by Saydur at 9:15 PM on December 4, 2005

I like the bandwidth idea Saydur suggests. Especially if you can manage it without affecting your own access.

Tangentially: I used to smoke in high school, and my mom would sometimes find a pack laying around. It'd be promptly disposed of and I'd get a lecture.

One day, she found a pack in my jacket pocket (I gave it away by being too careful when I hung it up). The next morning - as soon as I was out of sight of the house - I went looking for and found two granola bars there instead.

It was a very savvy way for her to deal with the problem. Perhaps you can think of something similar? Delete Kazaa, but retain the icon and have it launch something else instead?
posted by aladfar at 1:17 AM on December 5, 2005

Stopping Kazaa is more complicated than blocking incoming ports.

I think I have to agree with the others who say that a social solution may be your best option.
posted by Olli at 2:19 AM on December 5, 2005

Yes, even if you block incoming ports you can still do quite a bit on most p2p apps by only making outbound connections. And kazaa is notorious for trying many ways to get around such blocks.

Definitely look into the 3rd party firmware solutions that offer content-based filtering aka deep packet inspection. This will allow you to block (or better, throttle) the packets by their protocol signature, meaning that it will identify the kazaa traffic intrinsicly rather than trying to infer based on a port number.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:31 AM on December 5, 2005

Show your kids how to use usenet instead ;-)
posted by quibx at 6:32 AM on December 5, 2005

Give the kids accounts that don't have administrative access. "You can't be trusted to install software on this computer, so if you want anything installed you'll have to ask me first". Very simple and effective.
posted by antifuse at 6:39 AM on December 5, 2005

I think antifuse's suggestion is good.

However, if they are trying lots of different games - then you are going to have to install each and every one.

It was getting so bad with my 6 year old, that I gave up and finally granted her admin access again...

(Any problems I have at home with eMule, BitTorrent have nothing to do with my kids... Hell, my biggest problem is all the "adware/spyware/ActiveX controls" my wife installs to support her 'Sims' habit... ;-)
posted by jkaczor at 6:55 AM on December 5, 2005

Why not lock down the Linksys completely, except for the ports you need?

Or, get the dns names of the servers that they connect to and edit the %SYSTEMROOT%/system32/drivers/etc/host file on each pc to point them to 127.0.0.1 :)
posted by starscream at 4:17 PM on December 5, 2005