best approach for utorrent VPN on shared windows Server?

afn

Hey

I am looking for a reliable way to use a VPN/proxy for torrent downloads on Windows Server.

• The server has multiple accounts and 1 admin only, that may all have connected sessions at once.
• Ideally users should not be able to deactivate the VPN.
• Users use either utorrent or qBittorrent that are installed on the server (let's not worry about the possibility of a user using a portable version of a different client).
• I want the VPN/proxy to be used for torrent only to avoid slowing down other downloads (via browsers or other software).
• The VPN should not affect/break the RDP connection to the server, at least not regularly! it's okay if it happens once during setup because I can order IPMI temporarily.

Ideally I do not want to have to connect to each user's account and change the settings in their instance of the torrent client...

What I tried:
- ExpressVPN, I used the option to select torrent clients only but all users have access to the same single instance of expressVPN, and they can all change the settings, turn it on/off, etc not to mention that even with their split tunneling I see the server's IP when I download a torrent seeded from the server...

Any other suggestions please ?

Thanks

mandala

You can set up a VPN on the machine and require all users to bind their torrent client to it.

Next is setting up a firewall (2 rules: inbound and outbound) to block connection of the client to the internet if it doesn't use the VPN interface.
Use Windows defender firewall with advanced security, select the torrent client, block it, then right click on the rules > Properties > Scope > Remote IP address > These IP addresses, then add the subnet(s) of your non-VPN interface. What are added here will not be used by the client.

Then do this to have the VPN interface enabled but applications still connect directly without VPN by default:

And please stop using uTorrent. qBittorrent has a very similar interface and won't serve ads or anything weird.

afn

@mandala said: You can set up a VPN on the machine and require all users to bind their torrent client to it.

Thanks for your reply.
But there is only one problem with that. Speeds suck, and you won't be able to seed without forwarding ports. Most VPN will offer you 1 port and tell you to put it as the the port to use in your torrent client's settings. Only problem is we have multiple users, therefore multiple torrent clients...

I tried Private internet access, I am able to hide the server's IP but can barely seed... even with port forwarding

mandala

@afn said:

@mandala said: You can set up a VPN on the machine and require all users to bind their torrent client to it.

Thanks for your reply.
But there is only one problem with that. Speeds suck, and you won't be able to seed without forwarding ports. Most VPN will offer you 1 port and tell you to put it as the the port to use in your torrent client's settings. Only problem is we have multiple users, therefore multiple torrent clients...

I tried Private internet access, I am able to hide the server's IP but can barely seed... even with port forwarding

I'm not sure if you're using uTorrent for qBittorrent now. qBittorrent has a centralised config file qBittorrent.ini in \AppData\Local\qBittorrent\ of each user. You can symlink or systematically apply your config to your users, and disallow users to write to it.