I2P
|
|
Template:Infobox Software I2P is a free and open source project building an anonymous and/or pseudonymous virtual private network. The network is a simple layer that applications can use to anonymously and securely send messages to each other.
Note that it is likely that there are bugs in the software and there has been insufficient peer review to date. People should not use I2P prior to the 1.0 release without understanding the risks of their actions.
The network itself is strictly message based (a la IP), but there is a library available to allow reliable streaming communication on top of it (a la TCP). All communication is end to end encrypted (in total there are four layers of encryption used when sending a message), and even the end points ("destinations") are cryptographic identifiers (essentially a pair of public keys).
Although many of the developers had been a part of the IIP and Freenet communities, there are significant differences between their designs and concepts. IIP is an anonymous centralized IRC server, Freenet is a censorship resistant distributed data store, but I2P is an anonymous peer-to-peer distributed communication layer designed to run any traditional internet service (e.g. usenet, email, IRC, webhosting and http, telnet), as well as more traditional distributed applications (e.g. a distributed data store, a web proxy network using Squid cache, and DNS).
I2P is currently in the pre-alpha development stage and not yet ready for general anonymity use. The first stable release, version 1.0 is planned to arrive in August 2005.
The main developer of I2P is jrandom, with numerous support from others (http://www.i2p.net/team).
| Contents |
I2P software tools
Since I2P is an anonymous network layer, it is designed so other software programs can use it for anonymous communication, the so called application layer. As such there are a variety of tools currently available for I2P or in development.
I2P-BT
I2P-BT was a BitTorrent client for I2P that allowed anonymous swarming for file sharing. This client was a modified version of the original BitTorrent 3.4.2 program which ran on Windows and most Unices in a GUI and command-line environment.
I2P-BT was developed by the individual known as 'duck' on I2P in cooperation with smeghead. It is no longer being actively developed.
Reason for this is that the Azureus BitTorrent client took over with a new I2P plugin (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/plugin_details.php?plugin=azneti2p).
SAM
SAM [1] (http://www.i2p.net/sam) is a protocol that allows a client application written in any language to communicate over I2P.
Susimail
I2P has a free pseudonymous email service, run by an individual called Postman. The mail transfer servers are pop.mail.i2p and smtp.mail.i2p. Susimail was created to address privacy concerns in using these servers directly using traditional email clients, such as leaking the user's hostname while communicating with the SMTP server. Susimail is a Web-based email client intended primarily for use with Postman's mail servers, designed with security and anonymity in mind. It is currently included in the default I2P distribution, and can be accessed through your I2P router console web interface. (Note that this is only used to read and send email, not to create or manage your mail.i2p account; the latter must be done at www.mail.i2p.)
Azureus
Azureus is a BitTorrent client for I2P that allows anonymous swarming for file sharing.
See Also
- Anonymous P2P
- Freenet
- Onion Routing
- Crypto-anarchy
- Tor (anonymous network) - A similar anonymous communication system that is designed as more of an outproxy network to the existing Internet.
External Links
- Official I2P website (http://www.i2p.net/)
- I2P Files and Source code (http://dev.i2p.net/i2p/)
- How to use Azureus with I2P (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/doc/AnonBT/i2p/I2P_howto.htm)
- Ugha's wiki (http://ugha.i2p/) (I2P is required to access this site)
- A lists over other websites inside I2P (http://orion.i2p/) (I2P is required to access this site)de:I2P