So handy and for so many different reasons. Sometimes what you needed was specifically on that one webpage and sometimes for whatever reason you just can't access that website. In those cases the cached feature was usually the only way to access the content.
RyeMan
joined 1 year ago
Cries in JSX
I2P has its own DHT so all you need is an InfoHash to start downloading assuming there's at least one reachable seeder. MuWire is an application that lets you search the DHT. The developer recently abandoned the project though... I haven't tried it in some time but it probably still works.
It varies wildly between torrents based on activity of the torrent and your I2P tunnel settings. Participation on I2P torrents is definitely significantly lower than normal clearnet torrents (at the moment) so a lot of times there are only 1-2 peers available which often results in roughly 35-60 KB/s but I've also seen some more popular torrents download at nearly 1 MB/s. I2P can self update from a torrent, that file generally has high participation, and on average, downloads at speeds above 150 KB/s. There definitely is some bandwidth lost just due to overhead of running the network, fewer hops and more tunnels helps with that though. I usually run about 10 tunnels with Snark, all with 3 hops. If I reduce that to two hops I can still have good privacy but with significantly less bandwidth overhead, I just personally feel the extra privacy of three hops is worth the sacrifice.
Speed and bandwidth rely heavily on the level of participation, more high-bandwidth peers torrenting over I2P will significantly speed things up. With my current setup, my router pushes around 450 KB/s on average just for participating traffic (traffic that is only contributing to other I2P peers) so it's definitely capable of comparable speeds to that of a VPN.
Oh and I should have mentioned this before, torrenting over I2P also helps strengthen your connection to the I2P network because it introduces you to more high-speed peers to communicate with. Really speeds things up if you're trying to bootstrap a new I2P router
I2P has quite a few internal torrents with large swarm sizes that you can stress test pretty reasonably with. Another fun thing you can try if you are using I2P Snark (java I2P built-in torrent handler), you can paste magnet links from the clearnet into your client and if you're lucky some beautiful people out there are cross seeding that torrent and it'll allow you to take part in downloading clearnet torrents over I2P.
Others have summarized it well but I'll add my perspective also.
I2P is a decentralized network of peers. All traffic gets routed through multiple peers before reaching its destination. Traffic is also encrypted by multiple layers of encryption and each connected peer can only decrypt one layer, that layer will only contain further routing info so that peer knows the next place to hand off your data. The encryption gets stripped layer by layer until it finally reaches its destination.
What this ultimately means is that by interacting with a website or service through I2P it is virtually impossible to identify any information the user is sending or receiving and it is also impossible to tell where the connections are going or coming from.
To make things even more interesting all I2P routers by default also contribute resources back into the network so while your I2P Router is handling your communication connections, it's also volunteering to be a connection node in someone else's connection. This adds further security because now you've got many Peer to Peer connections going in and out of your network, all encrypted so any prying eyes will have an exceedingly difficult time trying to make sense of any of your internet traffic.
Tor relies on the good faith of its community to contribute resources to the network and it's not very well incentivised causing its resources to be far more limited and bogged down. For this reason, Tor cannot sustain heavy torrent traffic without easily being overwhelmed. In I2P, every user is a contributor so the more people who use I2P, the faster and better it becomes.
The big advantage Tor has over I2P are outproxies and the beautifully prepacked Tor Browser. Tor has a lot more influence and money backing it so there are some large and well protected entities that can afford all the legal trouble that outproxies can bring. Unfortunately there just isn't enough money or legal support in the I2P community to reliably support outproxies even though I2P already has full support for it.
I2P is a fantastic tool for private communication across the Internet and the true ELI5 here is I2P natively supports "anonymous" torrenting (even encouraged it as it strengthens the network further) and will do so privately and securely without any need for a VPN. Adding support to QBittorrent makes it even easier to access I2P torrenting with very minimal set up required.
The only catch here is you can't go around downloading any old torrent from the Internet on I2P, someone needs to actually be seeding that torrent on the I2P network for you to get any data. There are fully functioning tracker sites exclusively within I2P that have a huge catalog of content but all is not lost for "clearnet" torrents either. Software like BiglyBT and now QBittorrent, allows users to "bridge" or "cross seed" torrents across the two networks, that way content is shared no matter what network you're a part of.
BiglyBT has been doing this for a while now but I'm so happy to see QBittorrent finally embracing this as well.
EDIT: https://geti2p.net/en/
That includes NVMe.... Just spent two weeks troubleshooting a constant random reboot on my newly built pc.... It ended up being the m.2 port on the motherboard that was faulty, not even the drive itself. I've been building computers personally and professionally for over 20 years and that was a first for me. Everyone I talked to and every support forum insisted RAM or power supply were the problem but nope! Not this time!
But the lesson here is, if you have a recurring problem that has no obvious cause... Test EVERYTHING. Start with the common stuff that fails and work your way down: Power Supply -> RAM -> CPU -> GPU -> HDDs -> SSDs -> USBs
Tips for RAM: It's usually best to first boot into a ram testing tool like memtest86 and just let that do its thing. That alone is usually all you need to know if you have a memory issue. Sometimes though, results may not make sense, I've seen situations where a new stick of RAM fails at almost every block and it turned out to be the slots on the motherboard that were faulty. In that case if results seem a little fishy you can remove all but one stick of RAM in the first slot, run another test, then move that stick of RAM down to the next slot. Repeat until all slots have been tested, you can also be extra thorough if needed and repeat the same test with the other sticks of RAM. That usually helps rule out if it's a motherboard issue or an issue on the stick of RAM.
CPU/GPU: usually any old stress test will make any hardware issues apparent with these two.
SSDs: these can be a little tricky to test especially if you are booting from them but in my case I found that completely removing the NVMe drive solved all my problems (well a mobo rma was the real fix). I couldn't even boot into a live Linux USB without crashing and rebooting when my NVMe was plugged in. One not so obvious clue that the SSD was acting up was that event logs related to the crash were never written to the drive... Because I/O was outright failing.
USBs: yes, USBs are on that list. One of my first significant computer issues that I had ever encountered occurred from a faulty USB hub that stopped my PC from even booting up. I took it to two different repair shops they all told me nothing was wrong with my computer, but every time I brought it back home and plugged everything back in... I couldn't boot. It was a lucky chance that I figured out it was the USB hub, that was not a fun one.
Now I didn't even add motherboards to the list because quite frankly I'm not sure how they rank but they are the absolute worst piece of hardware to troubleshoot but luckily it's usually pretty rare that they fail. There are so many connections and settings built into motherboards that it quickly gets overwhelming trying to troubleshoot anything related to it. From my experience, if you have individually tested every bit of hardware and everything passes its test, most often it's the motherboard that's failing, especially if you have already ruled out software/firmware issues for sure. Motherboard issues aren't always obvious and can often fail in very bizarre ways.
And as a final bit of advice I'd like to throw out there from my years of experience in PC building.... NEVER CHEAP OUT ON A POWER SUPPLY. It affects every single component in your PC and when they fail it can get ugly. I bought a super cheap off-brand power supply one time and pushed that thing to the absolute limits and when it failed it took down more than half of my PC with it, fried my motherboard, CPU, and RAM. Additionally, the risk of fire is not zero when these things fail. Always use ONLY the cables provided for that power supply and nothing else. Those cables are rated specifically for the wattage that can be supplied by that power supply. Also, it's good to get a power supply that's roughly 100+ watts more than what your PC needs. This helps in maximizing the efficiency of the power supply as well as increasing longevity due to less thermal wear.