Websense workarounds?

So I'm here at my campus and what our network does and doesn't block is becoming more and more strict. It was a swift kick in the nuts a few days ago when I cued up Emule and it was blocked *sniff*. It's been the only P2P program I've used for YEARS because it's just so damned reliable and had everything I wanted. Now it seems I have to move on.

I'm not necessarily asking for any P2P programs that are good for entire albums like Emule is (recommendations are welcome though), but do any of you have any suggestions for how to fool the network into getting what I already have to work? A friend of mine introduced me to iPig, but the two problems with that are that you have to try and get bandwith allocated to it, and it's buggy as hell on my PC.

Any help is welcome, thank you.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I'm not familiar with WebSENSE and how it does its blocking, but the usual workaround for things like this is to have someone outside the network set up an SSH proxy, and then you route all your traffic through that. No sysadmin in his right mind is going to block SSH, because there are a plethora of legitimate uses for it.

The downside is that the guy running the proxy effectively becomes your ISP, which means your downstream speed maxes out at his upstream speed (as he sends all your packets to you). However, if you want to stick it to The Man, it's a good way to go.

What I personally can offer is this: If there's something you're looking to download, let me know. I run a secure-FTP server on my Mac at home and make it available on a case-by-case basis to GFFers looking for material. You can PM me with the stuff you're looking to get and if I have it or can get it, I'll put it up on the SFTP server and you can download it that way. SFTP goes over SSH too, so it should be allowed and the connection is encrypted so your sysadmin won't know what your'e downloading.

I'm looking into "officially" opening my SFTP server to Gamingforce but I need to work out limited logins and read/write permissions first. For the time being I'm just going on an individual basis until I get a feel for the FTP thing.

How ya doing, buddy?

Just FYI WebSENSE only filters web traffic. thats http/https traffic.

Your problem is that there is a firewall rule blocking access to the ports you need.

As CelticWhisper said, your best bet it probably a secure proxy of some kind.
Do you have access to a computer outside of your campus?

PS, CelticWhisper, what sFTP app do you use for mac?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Mac OS X.

SFTP is actually just a fancy name for SCP, which is built into SSH. It's just a UNIX "cp" command done over an encrypted connection to a remote host. Since Mac OS X has SSH built-in due to the UNIX subsystem, all I have to do is turn it on in the control panel and any user can login via SSH. The trick is configuring it to only allow x number of simultaneous logins, or only between y times, or not from z IP addresses, etc... It doesn't have quite the nice unified interface servers like FileZilla or BPFTP have, so I have to be careful about it. That's why I'm hoping killmoms will see this, Mac guru that he is, and have some previous experience to bestow upon me.

...

*ahem*
...
...
*crickets chirp*

God dammit.

How ya doing, buddy?

lool.
I knew about the SSH support, I was hoping you had something installed with a noob-friendly interface.
Ive just switched to OS X and im still getting used to the bsd command line.
My unix use is limited to about 10 basic commands right now.

I was speaking idiomatically.

There actually might be a frontend for it that lets you configure all of that stuff.

I've used Rumpus and CrushFTP for setting up a basic FTP server, but neither of them impressed me too much.

You might check SourceForge for something like that.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Ill look around, thanks.

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Well I don't have a computer that I can get access to right at this moment, but I may be able to work on doing so.

If I were to get one setup would I be able to filter all traffic through it, or would I have to do a PC anywhere type deal where I download files to that computer, and then upload them from there to my PC?

Also: Thank you for the offer CW, but I don't have small immediate needs I kinda like to download stuff on a grand scale type deal, so I need a more permanent fix.

How ya doing, buddy?

With a proxy, all traffic goes through it. You can also do what you were talking about, but that's more akin to setting up your own fileserver, and you still need some way of controlling the server and making it download what you need. PCAnywhere is one option, I personally find VNC to be a better one.

Jam it back in, in the dark.