bandwidth priorities

hey guys,
i need a hand here. the metwork at my school is running some new sowftware that prioritizes the bandwidth. this in turn limits the bandwidth to the lower priority items. for example, the internet now downloads at 350 kb/s but "napster-like" programs will not even download at 1 kb/s. my question is, how (without physically going and changing the priorities) can i get around this problem? i have been messing around with it a little and i am not even sure that it is possible at this point. but if anyone has any ideas, let me know.

thanks,
Lord DarkSide

I'm guessing it priorities on port numbers? i.e. ports 21 and 80 will get priority over 6346 or something that "napster-like" programs use... Thus, if you can connect to a "napster-like" server running on port 80, it might get the higher priority same as internet downloads.

I could be wrong, and, in fact, probably am wrong, but it's worth a try!

There are two major kinds of priority or Quality Of Service (Qos) mechanizems : Queuing (hope I spelled that right) and Windowing
Queuing methods are typically at a router, firewall or similiar device. alas this solution is impossible to avaide. On the other hand, Windowing is actualy done by intercepting packets, (much like sniffing) , changing the TCP window size thus fooling the session peers into thinking the connection is bad, effectivly causing them to reduce transmition speeds. You can aviod part of the effect by changing the window size in your OS to be static instead of the default which is dynamic. in windows it is done in the registry, and there are all kind of tweaker proggies that do this for you ( with modems in mind ofcourse ).

there are several well known packet shapers for those of you who are interested :

www.packeteer.com
www.net-reality.com