Posted by hyphanet123 in Privacy
https://github.com/eyedeekay/docs-from-freenet/blob/master/freenet-over-i2p.md
Freenet is typically run in “opennet” mode where it connects first to some seed nodes, then to several random strangers (your peers.) This is the most common way to run Freenet as most people don’t already know others they can connect to, so they just let Freenet choose their peers from the available pool of other users. This presents some security risks: if one of those random peers happens to be an adversarial node they now have your IP address, and if more than one are adversarial they could perform what’s known as a “surround attack” and possibly find out what you’re doing on Freenet, breaking both your anonymity and privacy. In any event, total strangers can easily see that you’re using Freenet and you’d probably feel more comfortable if they couldn’t.
The recommended solution is to run Freenet in “darknet” mode instead, where rather than connecting to random strangers you form a local, friends-and-family, “small world” network composed of people you actually know and trust, with whom you exchange node references, and then only connect to each other rather than to the seed nodes and to random peers. While doing so greatly increases your security, the difficulty is in forming this network in the first place.
It is recommended that for best performance and anonymity such a network have at least 10 members. How many of us personally know 10 people who 1) we can trust enough to let them know we use Freenet, 2) have both the computer know-how and the interest to want to do likewise, 3) can be relied on to follow best practices regarding security and anonymity, and 4) are likely to leave their computer and Freenet running 24x7? Not very many of us unless we happen to have a large circle of family and friends who are mostly computer geeks and privacy advocates. We would be lucky if we knew one or two such real-life friends.
This freesite offers a possible solution.
FYI, I2P was preferred over TOR as the anonymous network of choice to due to the fact that an increase in overall traffic and number of users on I2P increases its network routing efficiency as well as everyone’s anonymity, so they welcome users who use I2P for higher-traffic activities such as bit torrenting for example, while TOR discourages these activities on their network as such things would consume too many of its resources and could cause problems for other users. It comes down to how I2P’s “garlic routing” works vs. TOR’s "onion routing."