Introduction

This document describes how to get BT to work through an HTTP Proxy. Please note that this will only tunnel tracker communication through a proxy server, not the transfers themselves. This will work with burst!, and both the Official and the Experimental clients (I don't know about BT++, I don't use it).

For more information on the topic of proxies, including how to get things to work with an NTLM-authenticating proxy, see Brian Dessent's excellent BTFaq

Be sure to read below if you are behind a Coporate Firewall

Windows 2000/XP

Open "Control Panel"
Double Click "System"
Click the "Advanced" tab
Click on "Enviroment Variables"
Under "System Variables", click New
Set Variable Name to http_proxy
Set Variable Value to "http://user:pass@proxyip:port" (without the quotes; substitute your values in where appropriate)
Click OK, OK, OK

You may or may not have to reboot before settings take effect.

Windows 95/98/ME

Click on Start then Run
Type in "msconfig" without the quotes, click OK
Select the "Autoexec.bat" tab
Click on "New"
Type in "SET http_proxy=http://user:pass@proxyip:port" (without the quotes; substitute your values in where appropriate)
Click OK, OK

You WILL have to reboot before this setting takes effect.

Corporate Firewalls

I received an e-mail from Jono that may be of assistance to users behind Coporate Firewalls:

My suggestion is that the people will need to set the environment variable with their domain as well as the other info you mentioned (if it is relevant as it is in my case - corporate firewall...). Therefore, my system variable now reads...
http_proxy    http://<domain>\<username>:<password>@<proxyip>:<port>
Prior to putting in the domain portion I was not able to use Torrent but now I am free to roam the delights that Torrent offers.

Acknowledgements

This was discovered by Brian Dessent and posting to the BT mailing list.. I've simply added instructions on how to actually perform the configuration.

- kRYPT (krypt@mountaincable.net)