• MeThisGuy@feddit.nl
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      3 days ago

      are there any downsides like speed and connectivity?
      or has all that been worked out since it’s been around since 2002 (and apparently I’ve never heard of it like Tot, which has its own drawbacks)?

      • ladfrombrad 🇬🇧@lemdro.id
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        3 days ago

        Obviously there’s not as many seeds for torrents as there is on the Clearnet, but recent uploads saw me getting reasonably decent speeds while some of the older torrents can take some time or be dead…just like the ones on the Clearnet.

        There is something that while it doesn’t affect me here in the UK (yet…) there are issues with connectivity in certain dictatorships listed on their site

        https://geti2p.net/en/about/restrictive-countries

        Try it out, there’s even an Android app which I never really used and only have i2p on my server at home. Reading the reviews it seems to be hit and miss on a phone, and I should really give it a try sometime.

    • cannon_annon88@lemmy.today
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      3 days ago

      This is really interesting, but I guess I don’t fully understand it. Does this replace your ISP (like Comcast for example), or am I just reconfiguring my browser to access these sites and not send my traffic through the regular Internet?

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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        3 days ago

        It’s kinda like Tor, but different, more secure from what I understand. You also can’t access normal internet sites while properly connected to i2p

      • MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca
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        3 days ago

        I don’t really understand it either. Sounds like a series of tubes.

        What AI had to say about it:

        Yes, I2P (Invisible Internet Project) does require an internet service provider (ISP) for its functionality. While I2P is a decentralized network, it relies on your existing internet connection to function. You still need an ISP to connect to the internet and access I2P’s network.

        edit: going deeper, you have peers, and those peers are used to route and re-route your traffic. To basically scramble it. Its a more sophisticated and decentralized way of encrypting traffic. There are reseed nodes which are not decentralized that function to create initial connections and find peers. Once these peers are found though, you are on a completely decentralized darknet, so in theory your traffic is way more scrambled and way harder to trace.

        If you just want to get on the regular internet though (clearnet), its possible, but it seems this is not really the way to go as it isn’t as secure and it is slow. Tor would be a better option…

        Fundamentally it seems a lot like torrenting except much more secure. Your ip address is hidden, instead people see your cryptographic identifier. Your traffic is encrypted multiple times. A more simple comparison to torrenting; instead of peer to peer, it is peer to a long chain of peers, in which no peer can link the start chain to the end chain.