[Win7] Client keeps disconnecting during torrent download.

Anonymous_User

Recently the PIA client has been seriously screwing up for me. 

Here are my configurations:

Anyone know any simple fixes to this? It's very annoying...

Also, I've scaled my upload/download speeds to 100 kB/s.

So what would the best P2P configuration be?

eskaton

I had similar issues, and it was resolved by changing encryption from AES-128 to Blowfish. I'd been through support two or three times with changes to connection type, local/remote port, etc, but that one change made the speeds increase dramatically and never disconnect a single time since.
My only thought is my ISP monitored/throttled traffic with that encryption header/level...not sure.

Anonymous_User

Is Blowfish a better encryption algorithm than AES-128?

OS34

Short answer: Blowfish and AES with 128-bit keys are both "good enough".

Some would argue for AES, some would argue for Blowfish, and some would say as long as they are 128-bits it doesn't matter. Blowfish has been around since 1993 and has had successors based on its original. One of its successors, Twofish, lost out directly to Rijndael (now known as AES) to win the AES competition. That being said, it has never been cracked and is seen as more secure by some than AES. AES is seen as faster while still offering comparable security. In the end, you should be comfortable with using either. Obviously if security is a major issue you can go with AES 256, but for a nice balance of speed and security I would stick with the others.

OmniNegro

Blowfish, Twofish, Threefish, and AES all have one thing in common that is relevant here. None of them have ever been beaten. No, not even arrays of supercomputers have ever beaten any of them a single time.

128 bit Blowfish is harder to break that 128 bit AES. Yet 256 bit AES is still harder than 128 bit Blowfish. Twofish and Threefish can go to much larger bit strengths, and thus are debatably stronger. AES at the same bit strength is weaker than the rest due to CPU optimizations that can be used when attempting to crack them too. But remember that no one has ever successfully cracked any of these ciphers.

Anonymous_User

Thanks guys for all of your help!

valymer

Doubt you are still around, but just have to say thanks eskaton. I was having this exact problem: torrenting at super slow rates and disconnecting from VPN every 60 seconds or less using PIA client in Win7. Troubleshooting this for like 4 hours now when I came across this thread. Changing encryption to Blowfish seems to have fixed both those problems.

CurtC

Ditto on the thanks.  I was having this problem after switching to TCP on client v.58, windows 10.  Switching to Blowfish seems to have cured it so far.  Switching to TCP from UDP gives me about 5x better throughput, so I didn't really want to go back.

I'd be really interested in why this makes a difference though!

auwffoc

Segev

All I see under Data Encryption options are AES-128 and AES-256. How do you get "Blowfish" as an option to show up?

Nevermind. Found information saying that was disabled in the most recent client, so it's not possible anymore. Anybody have any other recommended fixes for the OP's problem?