Invisible Internet Project

Roll Over Tor, Nate Drake explores the strengths of the shadowy I2P network.

TI2P (The Invisible Internet Project) is a form of ‘darknet’ allowing users to visit web pages, chat, blog and even BitTorrent securely. A more detailed technical rundown is forthcoming but for now it’s enough to know that this anonymous peer to peer network provides the strongest protection against attempts to unmask your location and/or identity. This is mainly because it has been built from the bottom up with privacy in mind, but it also is largely unknown in privacy circles when compared to more popular alternatives such as Freenet or Tor. We are sure you can appreciate the irony.

Readers interested in their own security may well already be aware of Tor and its trusty companion the Tor browser bundle. (See www.torproject.org if not). Tor is also designed to anonymise your connection on the internet. The method used to achieve anonymity through I2P is similar to Tor’s. In fact, one of the safest ways to access I2P’s own ‘eepsites’ is to use the Tor Browser Bundle or the custom I2P browser in the TAILS Operating System.

As such, is I2P trying to reinvent the wheel, given that we already have Tor? In order to answer this question, it’s essential to understand Tor’s weaknesses. Tor uses ‘onion routing’—a process for sending data anonymously over networks. Packets of data are encrypted and sent through multiple nodes run by volunteers throughout the world.

Each Tor relay only knows the previous location of an encrypted packet as well as the next node to which it is being sent. It’s like peeling an onion; individual layers only touch those immediately in front and behind them. All the others remain totally separate to the others.