You don't need to route all traffic, just the traffic from your bittorrent client.
Download speeds have improved significantly as there are more people on there seeding than ever.
i2p is significantly better than a proxy, you jump through multiple hosts/tunnels before reaching the service.
Also it isn't all network traffic at all, just services connecting through i2p like a web browser you have setup to use it.
Doesn't this still have the same vulnerability of the potential for a hostile takeover similar to tor? Also, is there any way to use i2p to bypass geoblocking? If not that's a major reason why I and many people use vpns.
So no, i2p won't interact with the clearnet at all. So it doesn't help with access to clearnet sites that are geoblocked. I never used VPNs for geoblocking specifically, just for torrenting, so this wasn't in my list of use cases.
It makes sense sticking with a VPN if you really need to access a site that is blocked in your country. Or you could use Tor for that, but Tor has its own issues.
Also I'm still not familiar enough with I2P to know if it's vulnerable to hostile takeover. It IS a completely different protocol from Tor though, so my guess would be it doesn't have that same issue.
I don't even use VPNs for torrenting lol. I use them only for either geoblocking or scrambling my IP address for practical clearnet purposes such as signing up multiple accounts. Torrenting is not prosecuted or even mentioned in my country. The only issue I could have is my ISP not liking my download volume and throttling for a short period of time to counteract my "abuse" of the network.
hostile takeover similar to tor
yes but the NSA/FBI are not going after you for seeding family guy, they're there to get the CSAM and drugs
And what do I gain with this over having my torrent client bound to a wireguard interface running through a commercial VPN provider?
And what do I gain
Literally nothing.
That's not why port forwarding is important. Port forwarding is needed so that fresh peers can communicate with you and join the swarm. That act has the side-effect of speeding up transfers by allowing more people into the swarm spreading the transfer across more potential seeds/peers
You can cross-seed with people over clearnet using qBittorrent or BiglyBT, but that also exposes your IP to clearnet people. So you could get DMCA notices if it is copywrited content.
Otherwise typically no you will only be downloading and seeding with people on I2P if you haven't chosen to cross-seed.
but that also exposes your IP to clearnet people. So you could get DMCA notices if it is copywrited content.
So, for pretty much everyone this is the same as torrenting without a VPN at all.
See this comment for seeding to both clearnet and i2p. I2PSnark (the builtin torrent client) only interacts with I2P, but biglybt can do bridge.
Only one way to find out. Also, the more people participating, the better for everyone. We have the main developer over at the I2P sublem* so feel free to ask there.
*or whatever they're called
It's not really a fiasco at all. OP seems to be blowing it way out of proportion. For the vast majority of users it's not a big deal at all. They are disallowing port forwarding due to how many letters/threats they've gotten from their datacenters and law enforcement.
What about port forwarding opens Mullvad up to more scrutiny from law enforcement?
Here is Mullvad's statement on the changes and why, which should hopefully elaborate details pertaining to your question.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense.
Basically dirty fuckers ruining it for everyone else.
In general, torrenting doesn't require port forwarding.
I'm skeptical of changing what works. Haven't had any issues with the VPN I use. I'll keep this in mind for sure nonetheless.
I2pd + Qbittorrent is the best solution. Simple to setup and works great, the only catch is that right now you need to use the Qbittorrent alpha version (because it has i2p support) or just wait for the release.
Highly recommend experimenting with i2p, there's cool stuff on it as well!
And if more people join i2p to torrent the faster the speeds will get. You are a seeder of the i2p network basically. (Which is great!)
Absolutely agree. I setup qBittorrent to use it and my experience has been great once everything is setup to work, which I'll admit was tricky trying to use the latest alpha release. Using i2psnark is much easier for most folks for now I think.
Fuck, this is how I find out Mullvad is dropping support for port forwarding.
I already have a protonmail account, guess I'll get the VPN too now. My entire setup relies on using wireguard on the firewall level, so another solution like i2p won't work
Can you go a bit more into detail what it actually is, what are its advantages and disadvantages and how it works? I find it weird that people are still paying for VPNs if the superior solution that consists of just running this program existed this whole time, there's gotta be a catch that you're not mentioning. What or who exactly guarantees anonymity and safety if using this tool?
I did explain in another comment some general information about I2P. The one where I mention how it is a darknet but is much different than Tor.
The reason many more people don't use it yet is because it is hard to setup. That's pretty much it. Similar to lemmy or other things that exist it is just difficult to get people using it unless it is significantly easier to use.
However, recently things have gotten easier. The dev for i2p has included an easy windows installer for i2p that should make this much better for most users. So some development has happened there.
Also just recently qBittorrent included support for I2P in their latest release. Before that, only 2 Bittorrent clients existed. Now we're up to 3.
The biggest advantage is that you don't need to spend money anymore for a VPN. Or any money for a seedbox either if you have a home computer you can just leave up to seed for you.
The biggest disadvantage is the hard setup and (so far) lack of torrent availability. More stuff is getting added all the time but we need more scene groups adding their releases to i2p (cross-seeding).
The biggest advantage is that you don't need to spend money anymore for a VPN
Unless you use it for accessing and switching to and from Canadian/UK Netflix or something like that on a Roku or Firestick, I presume.
That is correct. For geoblocked content only available in certain regions, a VPN is still useful. However, much of that content can be obtained through other methods. You could download it and use Plex/Jellyfin to stream it to Roku or Firestick.
Fucking pedos ruined everything.
If thats what the poster is calling a "fiasco", thats a bit much. I was curious what Port forwarding was when that announcement first happened and Mullvad themselves said if you didn't know what Port forwarding was before their announcement, nothing was changing for you in regards to their services. This is only a fiasco (to my understanding) if you're someone who file-shares/torrent. Not saying the poster is spreading bad faith or whatever of course.
Lots of people were looking for new VPNs because of it and Mullvad was officially taken off the list of recommended VPNs (on /r/vpntorrenting) because of this change. I always seed a lot because I have unlimited data so this change forced me to stop using Mullvad.
Yeah I realized my dumbness when I reread the post again a third time and used logic. I just simply didn't read hence why I deleted my comment like 10 minutes after I posted it. My fault on that one.
Does this have any serious implications for the average VPN user? Like would any torrenting reveal your IP without port forwarding?
Nope. Disabling port forwarding protects Mullvad from legal liability with respect to illegal content being hosted through their service. Your IP wouldn't be revealed with or without port forwarding.
Port forwarding, which Mullvad was allowing until recently, allows other people to connect to your bittorrent client that is downloading/seeding torrents. This makes it easier for you to find others who can either help you download, or seed for other users in the network.
Basically it improves download speeds and allows you to easily upload to everyone else.
I see, thanks for clarifying! Even without port-forwarding, I'm able to make some connections. Is there just a more limited set of destination IPs I'm able to connect to? What dictates whether or not I'm able to connect?
Yes! You still get to make outgoing connections to anybody who can accept incoming connections.
Port forwarding makes it so you can accept incoming connections.
Oh also for your last question: Firewalls and NAT. NAT stands for network address translation. NAT is what these services use for getting people to 'share' ip addresses in a pool and then map ports to each person/host. https://en.wikipedia.org/...
Interesting. So when I'm connecting to peers for downloading, these connections can be initiated in both ways? And since I'm not currently port-forwarding, this means I can only actively find peers, rather than passively accepting incoming connections?
Read this article - https://tailscale.com/...
Maybe one day ipv6 will allow direct connections again, but I get the feeling that ISPs will still disallow new inbound connections by default.
Thanks for the info. Although this can't really replace VPNs for my specific use-cases, this is still very useful info to have just in case. Good to know there are alternatives. Thanks also for including the info hash for the guide.
I wouldn't call it a "fiasco", but they're disabling port-forwarding for everyone on July 1st. They say it's because people are hosting "unfavorable" content and it's getting their IPs banned. Their article
No. I2P works differently than Tor. There are no exit nodes, because there are no exits. I2P is separate from all clearnet traffic. For example, you cannot browse reddit.com from within i2p, like you can with tor.
That's exactly correct, yes. A VPN is still useful for accessing clearnet websites that you want to conceal from your ISP. I'm arguing that you don't need to go to clearnet websites for most of the stuff you download from public trackers. private trackers are always going to have great quality releases, but I could see them moving over to i2p at some point as well. Though DMCA shouldn't be much of a concern for private trackers anyway.
It's a entirely different protocol then? That's smart actually. I need to look into it.
Seems like i2p has its own version of exit nodes. So if you're not configured as an exit node you should be in the clear as all communications are end to end encrypted, so it would be difficult to impossible to determine what is passing through you as an intermediate node.
I'm hoping DHT and PEX support comes to libtorrent eventually so that qbittorrent can use DHT/PEX with I2P and not just http trackers. I think only i2psnark and a few other clients support it right now. I encourage everyone to cross seed their public torrents to the I2P network and upload to patracker to support the network. Unfortunately, for niche content and private trackers VPNs/seedboxes are a necessity
PSA: qbittorrent has early access (still in development) for native i2p torrenting. I recommend waiting for that to be officially released
I have never used i2p but isn't it pretty slow? I only have experience with Tor and it's not recommended to torrent through Tor. I did listen to the interviews of both Tor and i2p on a Privacy podcast but it was a while back
It's one of those things that gets faster the longer I2P software is running. As I understand it, it takes time to building link betoween yourself and other members of the network in a safe and secure way, but once they're built up that extends your reach and speed
Basically, yes
Could you add a block about I2P in general?
I2P is a darknet similar to Tor in some ways, but it is perfectly legal and safe to use depending on what you're doing on it, of course.
It is used for regular browsing and running services on. People setup hidden services like websites or mail servers or anything on it really. Lemmy could theoretically be hosted over I2P as well, it just wouldn't federate properly with these ones on the clearnet.
Any other info you would want included? I2P can get pretty in depth but that's my basic understanding of what I use it for.
I2P is a darknet similar to Tor in some ways, but it is perfectly legal and safe to use depending on what you’re doing on it, of course.''
TOR is completely legal and safe to use depending on what you are doing as well. Let's not demonize the service due to a few bad actors.
Yeh I had tried torrenting on Tor a LONG time ago but people made it clear to not do that on Tor for one reason or another. But on i2p, the devs made a torrent client directly into the software. It was one of their features and something they want people to use.
I2p is a closed network where everyone participates and using cryptography packets are encrypted so so only the destination can reason them. All packets are sent through short lived tunnels which are connections of various nodes in the network that change at every so often.
You traffic never hits the main internet. Its a full darknet with a torrent network system , email, websites, private encrypted messaging and more built on top of it.
So they are all encrypted. Nobody knows the IP of anyone else
I think the only use-case maybe not covered is finding torrents that aren't uploaded to the I2P tracker yet. They need to be cross-seeded from people who originally uploaded them or from people downloading them from the clearnet to be available.
An example of this is anime. There is significantly less anime available on i2p currently than there are on sites like nyaa.si. People can cross-seed these torrents to make them available on i2p. I do that, for instance. But other than that I can't think of any other use case that isn't covered.
I just changed to AirVPN.
Some alternatives I considered: using i2p (but was unaware of the tracker you mentioned) and exploring a fancy VPN called Orchid because it seemed fancy, but gave up on the last two.
I'll try again i2p to share my Ubuntu ISO.
So it looks like setup on ubuntu should be pretty straightforward. Follow these steps to install the java client as a package: https://geti2p.net/en/download/debian
Then under their Post-install work on the bottom of that page follow this:
as a service that automatically runs when your system boots, even before logging in. The service can be enabled with "dpkg-reconfigure i2p" as root or using sudo. This is the recommended means of operation.
That will cause i2p to automatically run at startup. You can use the other methods there if you don't want that behavior. Lastly, you'll need to configure a browser to use i2p. https://geti2p.net/en/about/browser-config
Firefox is a good one to use for it but you can use librewolf or another one.
And I think that's it as far as setup for ubuntu. Let me know if you have more questions : )
There is a package called i2pd in Debian. So shouldn't it be as simple as running sudo apt install i2pd?
Has anyone tried to use this with Docker and Raspberry Pi? It doesn't appear to work for me:
i2p_1 | standard_init_linux.go:219: exec user process caused: no such file or directory
which I think is probably an architecture error. I saw somewhere on Reddit someone was working on an Arm64 docker, but can't find the post now.
For i2p? I'm not trying to get lemmy to run in docker, just i2p. :-) There do not appear to be any geti2p arm64 images. There is a diva-exchange arm64 tree but it also does not appear to be maintained anymore. 🤷♀️
Thanks for your posts, btw!
As I remember there should be arm64 images for i2pd, like this one https://hub.docker.com/r/purplei2p/i2pd
That works pretty well; it's not as polished as the geti2p docker, but it gets the job done! Just need to wait on qBittorrent to firm up their i2p support and I think it'll be golden for my needs. Thanks!!
Yes. When you setup I2P, if you are on a home router with NAT, you setup port forwarding for I2P to get through. I believe it supports UPnP as well, which would circumvent this need.
You don't need to configure anything else for being connectable from the wider network. The torrent clients remain connectable allowing you to easily seed.
I'll read up on this. It's new for me and thr first time hearing of it, but we should always consider working alternatives
Tor relies on exit nodes that are run by volunteers. These exit nodes are limited in both quantity and bandwidth and valuable for activists and others requiring high levels of privacy for the clearnet. I2P does not access the clearnet by default. Instead I2P is peer to peer focused and is setup ideally for torrenting privately. Basicaly Tor would be overloaded if it was used heavily for torrenting. I2P instead gets more robust with eachadditional user.
I use private internet access for years with port forwarding after almost getting booted from my ISP, been fine here
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
I2p is not a substitution for a proxy. I2p is an end-to-end encryption Network and unless it's changed over the past couple of years it's incredibly slow for any multimedia transfer. Coupled on top of that you have to have the knowledge to be able to set up your full system to route all traffic through it. So using it as a a security step for most people is already out of the question. It's not like a VPN where you can just plug and play. Having your entire network communicate through l2p is going to make everything substantially slower.
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