It is important to know what to do if your Internet Service Provider decides to throttle or block certain ports that are used by applications that use the Bittorrent protocol. Comcast recently started using an application called Sandvine which uses a new way to throttle or block traffic. Sandvine uses something that is called session management which basically limits the number of open connections on your computer without caring about ports and protocols for instance.

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Relakks offers a easy and anonymous way to be on the Internet by tunneling all traffic through their service which is based in Sweden. This effectively means that your home IP is not revealed to websites, p2p clients and servers and all other computers and servers that you are connecting to.

The traffic is encrypted as well which makes it unlikely that someone is able to spy on it including your ISP. I have been writing about Relakks before and they had some serious troubles with their service at the beginning which turned off many users who tried the service initially.

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Relakks encrypts all traffic from your computer to the Internet by using a VPN connection which means that your real IP is not revealed on the Internet at all. The service had serious troubles in the beginning; users were unable to connect to Relakks at all, had slow connections and email support was terrible. Well, they apparently are making a comeback by emailing past users inviting them to freely test Relakks once again for seven days without charges.

I decided to try it out once again and was able to signup again with their service. You have to configure a new VPN connection in your operating system which is explained in the faq section of their website. Details are provided for Microsoft Windows XP, Vista and Mac OS X. Even beginners should be able to create a VPN connection this way. You can now choose to automatically use Relakks whenever you connect to the Internet or manually activate the service, I decided to use it manually but it does not make a difference as long as the service is running.

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Relakks had a few problems shortly after their start due to the amount of users that registered the service right after it was introduced. Connections have been really slow and I had no chance to further test the service and write about my experience with it. I’am currently writing this article while being connected to Relakks and everything is working fine so far. I’am able to open websites and surf the internet without problems. I’am able to check my email and download files using Relakks.

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Meebo is a web instant messenger that currently supports AIM & ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber & GTalk and MSN. Instead of installing the instant messenger itself you simply login using the Meebo website which offers the same functionality as the standalone messenger.

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