| 33 | |
| 34 | I2P |
| 35 | |
| 36 | Abstract |
| 37 | |
| 38 | In the following we explain the I2P network, a message based low latency mixing network build |
| 39 | for anonymity and security. In detail the functions to sort and measure the |
| 40 | capacity and speed of the network nodes will be described. We show that this |
| 41 | approach works better than fixed speed rating used e.g. in the TOR network. |
| 42 | |
| 43 | |
| 44 | I2P Overview |
| 45 | |
| 46 | I2P itself is a overlay network based on unidirectional tunnels routed between |
| 47 | the I2P nodes. The used garlic routing is similar to the onion routing used by |
| 48 | TOR, trnasmitting data from hop to hop until the endpoint of the tunnel is |
| 49 | reached. In contrast to TOR we use only hidden services in I2P with addition |
| 50 | of a few otproxies operated by private individuals. |
| 51 | The ancestor of the I2P project was IIP - a specialiced IRC server and clients |
| 52 | transmiting their data via a mix network between themself. I2P was first started |
| 53 | as a specialized low latency transport protocal for The Freenet Project but soon |
| 54 | grew into a independent software project, driven by the author jrandom from |
| 55 | 2003 on until end of 2007. Other people joined coding and vanished in time between and |
| 56 | after jrandom vanished the project end of 2007, zzz and complication took over |
| 57 | active programming. The codebase itself is public domain or licensed under GPL |
| 58 | with exception, MIT or other free licenses. Most code is written in JAVA to |
| 59 | support the three main operating systems, Windows,Linux and MacOS X. |
| 60 | To maintain 1024bit pub-key encryption, some external libs as the GMP (GNU MP |
| 61 | Bignum Library) are interweaved with the java code. |
| 62 | The codebase is under active development with 7 releases in the year 2008 and |
| 63 | more than 100 development builds between those public releases. |
| 64 | Beside the core router itself some bundled software (e.g. a bittorrent client |
| 65 | based on snark, I2Psnark) are maintained by zzz and complication. |
| 66 | |
| 67 | In time writing this paper 830 active nodes are active in the I2P net. This |
| 68 | varies over time, as 50-100 new nodes joining the network every day and others |
| 69 | vanish. Usual on weekend times the peak of 1000 active nodes are reached and |
| 70 | in weekdays night the lower peak at 700 active routers happens. This shows a |
| 71 | quite stable base net on which the ~550 active destinations can act on. |
| 72 | I2P is oriented towards hidden services, all destinations inside the network |
| 73 | upon the nodes. Only one http outproxy (exit node in TOR terms) is known running |
| 74 | beside a IRC gateway for I2P development discussion. In contrast to TOR is I2P |
| 75 | peer to peer friendly and distributes the encrypted traffic between all |
| 76 | participating nodes. |
| 77 | The current bandwith used by all nodes is roughly 11 MByte/sec with peaks at 16 |
| 78 | MByte/sec and the net builds ~40.000 tunnels producing this load. |
| 79 | In the last 6 month the net grew from 400 up to 800 nodes, from 5 to 10 MByte/sec |
| 80 | and from ~20.000 to ~40.000 tunnls, which shows the vital stats of the net |
| 81 | doubled in half a year. The forthcoming time shows ongoing stable growth. |
| 82 | |
| 83 | Tunnel Overview |
| 84 | |