Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

#71

Post by jchw »

miohtama wrote: post #68
warner25 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gets a lot of things right... having every network participant relay some internal traffic There are trade-offs. The Tor Project has its reasons for not doing this (from https://support.torproject.org/alternate-designs/ ): "...many Tor users cannot be good relays — for example, some Tor clients operate from behind restrictive firewalls, connect via modem, or otherwise aren't in a position where they can relay traff…

Originally Skype and Spotify had their own peer-to-peer networks and distribution. Both stopped using them because it worked so badly.

For a long time Skype's P2P architecture worked great. It was the absolute best A/V calling experience, handily beating every other contemporary mainstream offer from MSN to Y!IM. It had issues such as getting crushed by patch Tuesday, and I assume it was likely not robust enough to adversaries, but one thing you can't say about Skype was that its P2P architecture didn't work. It absolutely did.

I think even though there were many things that could've lead to the demise of Skype's P2P network, it was pretty undoubtedly the rise of mobile phones. Android or iOS, Skype was just dreadful; they were clearly ducktaping mobile support in. Sometimes you'd be sending messages and everything would appear to be working, little did you know the other person was responding but you weren't actually seeing anything. Push notifications? Sometimes you get them, but it was a crapshoot as to when you would get them. It probably was expensive to try to bridge their P2P network to mobile phones, and it definitely didn't work very well.

I guess anyone can just say these things and it's really difficult to back them up since a large part of it is subjective (and aside from some reverse engineering efforts, I am not really intimately familiar with much of the details behind Skype and its transition off of P2P) but I think there is one thing that most people would definitely not disagree with: Skype was far more relevant and well-regarded when it was peer to peer. That's not to say that the move off had anything to do with its downfall, more just to say that if it was so awful, I think it would've been the other way around.

Re: I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

#72

Post by zx8080 »

miohtama wrote: post #68
warner25 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gets a lot of things right... having every network participant relay some internal traffic There are trade-offs. The Tor Project has its reasons for not doing this (from https://support.torproject.org/alternate-designs/ ): "...many Tor users cannot be good relays — for example, some Tor clients operate from behind restrictive firewalls, connect via modem, or otherwise aren't in a position where they can relay traff…

Originally Skype and Spotify had their own peer-to-peer networks and distribution. Both stopped using them because it worked so badly.

> it worked so badly.

Skype has a much worse quality now after the switch for all people I know who used Skype at the time.

The real reason for switching was iPhone. First, Apple did not allow long-running apps in favour of centralized notifications. Periodically start Skype to check events did not help recwicing calls. Second, users moved to smartphones, which depleted the active nodes network. So there has been an increase of short-lived nodes without balanced increase in long-lived. So to prevent the p2p network model to start failing, Skype moved to a centralized one. And probably the government regulations (to store and decrypt messages) took place, but this was probably not very public.

Re: I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

#73

Post by nine_k »

warner25 wrote: post #58
wongarsu wrote: post #3

I really like I2P as a project, and I think it gets a lot of things right. For example having every network participant relay some internal traffic, instead of relying on altruism from relay operators, makes it much harder for a single entity to control enough hops to deanonymize users. Sadly, outside of torrenting I2P doesn't seem to have much traction, losing out to the better funded tor project

> gets a lot of things right... having every network participant relay some internal traffic There are trade-offs. The Tor Project has its reasons for not doing this (from https://support.torproject.org/alternate-designs/ ): "...many Tor users cannot be good relays — for example, some Tor clients operate from behind restrictive firewalls, connect via modem, or otherwise aren't in a position where they can relay traff…

Tor was invented with a purpose of giving users with poor, restricted connections to access forbidden stuff untracked. Think journalists under oppressive regimes in the third world, or, of course, undercover agents.

I2P was invented to give people with relatively good, usually excellent, connectivity a way to access forbidden stuff untracked. Think media "piracy" first and foremost, also dark-grey market stuff, etc. Everything else is better served by either your own VPN, or the public Internet.

Re: I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

#74

Post by efd6821b »

Scion9066 wrote: post #65
efd6821b wrote: post #56

Tor Browser is Tor's killer app. I2P needs a secure simplified fingerprint-free browser that only does basic HTML, otherwise you're just asking for trouble.

Couldn't that be the Mullvad Browser which is based on the Tor Browser?

I'm thinking Gemini on I2P on a Rust unikernel VM, not some insecurable swiss cheese made out of C++/HTML5/CSS/Javascript running on Windows ;).

Re: I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

#75

Post by warner25 »

j45 wrote: post #66
warner25 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gets a lot of things right... having every network participant relay some internal traffic There are trade-offs. The Tor Project has its reasons for not doing this (from https://support.torproject.org/alternate-designs/ ): "...many Tor users cannot be good relays — for example, some Tor clients operate from behind restrictive firewalls, connect via modem, or otherwise aren't in a position where they can relay traff…

Not often a network protocol / communication thread breaks out Neat point. I wonder if the percentage of bandwidth shared could be relative to the speed or openness of network available?

I think it would be exactly like that, because that's how it already works for relays. The Tor Project operates a measurement system that tests relays in various ways and records their status in the public consensus document. Clients then use weighted random selection (along with some screening criteria) to choose relays in proportion to how much bandwidth they provide, according to the consensus.

Re: I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

#76

Post by vGPU »

warner25 wrote: post #58
wongarsu wrote: post #3

I really like I2P as a project, and I think it gets a lot of things right. For example having every network participant relay some internal traffic, instead of relying on altruism from relay operators, makes it much harder for a single entity to control enough hops to deanonymize users. Sadly, outside of torrenting I2P doesn't seem to have much traction, losing out to the better funded tor project

> gets a lot of things right... having every network participant relay some internal traffic There are trade-offs. The Tor Project has its reasons for not doing this (from https://support.torproject.org/alternate-designs/ ): "...many Tor users cannot be good relays — for example, some Tor clients operate from behind restrictive firewalls, connect via modem, or otherwise aren't in a position where they can relay traff…

Doesn’t that make i2p less vulnerable to an issue tor suffers from - that of hostile-owned relays and exit points? I remember reading something about how a large part of them were controlled by US intel.

Re: I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

#77

Post by imglorp »

zx8080 wrote: post #72
miohtama wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally Skype and Spotify had their own peer-to-peer networks and distribution. Both stopped using them because it worked so badly.

> it worked so badly. Skype has a much worse quality now after the switch for all people I know who used Skype at the time. The real reason for switching was iPhone. First, Apple did not allow long-running apps in favour of centralized notifications. Periodically start Skype to check events did not help recwicing calls. Second, users moved to smartphones, which depleted the active nodes network. So there has been an…

Microsoft buying Skype must have added additional incentives to centralize. Regulatory, organizational control, auditing, etc. And tinfoil take would include surveiling.

Re: I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

#79

Post by timschmidt »

imglorp wrote: post #77
zx8080 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it worked so badly. Skype has a much worse quality now after the switch for all people I know who used Skype at the time. The real reason for switching was iPhone. First, Apple did not allow long-running apps in favour of centralized notifications. Periodically start Skype to check events did not help recwicing calls. Second, users moved to smartphones, which depleted the active nodes network. So there has been an…

Microsoft buying Skype must have added additional incentives to centralize. Regulatory, organizational control, auditing, etc. And tinfoil take would include surveiling.

http://www.h-online.com/security/features/Skype-s-ominous-li...

Re: I2P: End-to-end encrypted and anonymous internet

#80

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

Spoom wrote: post #45
londons_explore wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to avoid copyright notices, then you need to do it for the payload too. That's because a copyright holder could easily host a copy of some pirate film on your new network, and then just see the destination of the data packets.

Wait, but if the copyright holder is sending the actual payload to you as a client, couldn't you make the argument that they implicitly authorized you to have it? AFAIK, cops can't deal you actual drugs and then arrest you for it.

> AFAIK, cops can't deal you actual drugs and then arrest you for it.

Why not? This sounds like a misunderstanding of entrapment

Post reply on HN