Excessive leeching by peers is one of the biggest problems when using BitTorrent. One more thing to look out for is selfish and cheating BitTorrent clients like BitComet which limits uploads severely, and BitThief, which does not upload anything. Both of these problems can be solved by blocking offensive peers.
Note that this blocking is effective for the IP address, which means that blocking a peer in one torrent will block it out from everything else. IP address blocking should not be misused because it can hurt the torrent health, and ultimately lead to slower or dead torrents if used improperly.
In this tutorial, we describe how to block IP addresses in uTorrent, one of the most popular BitTorrent clients.
Block IP addresses in uTorrent
In uTorrent, blocking clients can be done by following these steps:
- Go to Options > Preferences (or hit Ctrl+P), go to Advanced tab and scroll down to
ipfilter.enable, click on it and set it to true. Click OK to exit preferences window. - Find and click once the torrent, and click the Peers tab. Right-click anywhere inside the Peers tab and uncheck “Resolve IPs”. So, all peers will be listed by their IP address alone, which is what we need.
- Open a Notepad window and manually type in any IP address that you wish to block.
- Save the Notepad window (with the IP addresses) as “ipfilter.dat” (including the quotes). The location for saving the file should be
C:Documents and SettingsUSERNAMEApplication DatauTorrent, where USERNAME is the user name of your system account. If you have installed Windows in a different drive, changeC:accordingly. - Go back to uTorrent, click the any torrent, go to the Peers tab, right-click and click “Reload IP filter”.
If you need to block more IP addresses later, open ipfilter.dat, add the IP addresses, save the file, then go to uTorrent, click any torrent, go to its Peers tab, right click and click “Reload IP filter”.
If you do not want the hassle of going through all these steps, you could use an alternative client that provides easy IP blocking, but that means you would not be able to use uTorrent 
Related reading
- uTorrent updated to v1.8.1
- Download uTorrent for Mac OS X (beta)
- Download uTorrent torrent client for Mac OS X
- Configure uTorrent / Azureus port forwarding router settings
Never came across such a situation, but anyways, thanks a lot for sharing the tip.
I had tried uTorrent once…
but left it as it was sooo slow
have some tips or tutorials to actually use it efficiently?
@Quakeboy: uTorrent isn’t particularly slow. However, the two links below might help speed up uTorrent, Azureus etc.:
http://torrentfreak.com/speed-up-your-torrents/
http://torrentfreak.com/optimize-your-bittorrent-download-speed/
If these don’t work and it’s your internet connection that is acting up (perhaps because your ISP throttles torrents), no tweak can help you – get a better net pipe.
Thank you for your knowledge, I have been annoyed by some peers for a long time. This help me so much.
Again, Thank you
thank you very much…
cool man..
thanks for this , Im having problems with peer guardian & its probably better to block with the app that is doing the transfers anyway
I’m currently working on a script to compare the upload rate to the download rate of peers, and output the resulting IPs based on the ratio determined by the user. Script will be able to enable “ipfilter.enable”, and append resulting IPs to ipfilter.dat. End result will be for users to start blocking leechers. And by leechers I mean users who download (for example) at 500kb/s and upload at .5kb/s. I know the usual complaints… “It will kill swarms”. No it will not. If you’re sharing at a reasonable rate (based on your download rate) you will have nothing to worry about. If you’re one of the ones that take and take and take, while giving nothing back (like it hurts you somehow) then you’re going to get a taste of your own medicine. Search your favorite torrent sites for “leech killer”.
super article.
thanks a lot mate !!! … simple and sensible !!! …
i wud just like to add one more thing :
if already the ipfilter.dat exists , then just open that file with notepad and enter ur un-desired ip address in a new line .. and save again ! …
yup, this is a very useful guide. I had forgot (duh, i have a pc science degree after all…but in programming) that all you needed as the IP & then name the file with .dat for use in uTor. Now if the average user would ALSO learn how HOSTS files work, then the Pc world would be a much, much safer place!
They ignore requests for useful (anticheating) features and lock (usually belittling) questions. It’s bad enough the mysterious change of ownership around version 1.6. Why do lazy utorrent devs refuse to add a block client context menu option (right click menu in peer tab)? Why to rude utorrent devs refuse to add undesirable client (BitComet) blocking features?
F’em
Your tutorial does not show how to block IPAs *in* utorrent… it shows how to block DESPITE utorrent devs
I agree with some of what you say – but isn’t feature lock typical of many other non-open source software? And any way, we have alternatives (like Deluge on Windows/Linux and Transmission on OS X).
Pressing “reset ban” works anyhow to download faster my file?
What about pressing “Clear peer list”?
thanks
thanks for that
using ‘kick and ban’ in vuze is obviously simpler
i have used that to ban every peer i encounter from israel
i do not want to share with anyone who supports an apartheid regime which is murdering palestinian children
your method requires me to first see the country flags and then note the ip addresses so that when i turn off ‘resolve IPs’ i know which ones are from israel. the good thing is that these addresses are banned forever from all torrents.
Just wanted to add a little comment regarding the anti leacher posts. I live in Aust and unfortunatley my ISP maintains a literal monopoly on what internet connection I can have ie. I have no choice its bigpond or NOTHING. They charge me 2-3 times as much as any other ISP and give me a fraction of what any other ISP offers, additionly they count all uploads against my 12gig per month limit… 12 gig per month… and they count the uploads… additionly my connection is via cable which allows me to get a realised downspeed of up to 400k per sec on a really really good day with a LOT of seeds and pears however my upload is limited by the ISP to literally 15k per second. If I allow utorrent to use all 15k of my upload potential my internet connection becomes effectively useless as my computer can no longer respond with acks to the incoming syn packets I receive… so in short while there are folks who are abhorent in the their leaching care for no one else ways there are also folks like me who only get to down a fraction of what the rest of the world does and cannot even technically/willing do the “right thing” by the community. BTW I pay around $95 aud per month for my connection pretty sweet huh…