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I still really don't understand why people keep developing Tor over I2P - I2P is clearly the better protocol offering complete untraceable anonymity and a chanc

I still really don't understand why people keep developing Tor over I2P - I2P is clearly the better protocol offering complete untraceable anonymity and a chance to secceed from the stigma of Tor...

cyphar 10y ago
I've heard that I2P tends to add experimental features that don't have any rigorous analysis of the privacy impact. So there's that.
praptak 10y ago
Anything that replaces Tor will get the stigma of Tor.
arca_vorago 10y ago
I think tor has more marketing and mindshare than I2P, and thats why you see tor more than it. I would like to see a more in depth comparison of the two, do you know of a good one?
MajesticHobo 10y ago
> offering complete untraceable anonymity Your argument falls apart the moment you claim this.
zmanian 10y ago
Tor is a solution for both anonynmity & privacy and censorship evasion. I2P is oriented primarily towards anonymity and privacy. I2P has an attractive anonymous service design and can run applications like Bittorrent over it. But it also developed basically by 3 people in New Zealand. Tor has more funding b/c of censorship evasion features being attractive to funders. Successes in the anonynmity feature set like SecureDrop. A vibrant academic community with conferences etc. Lots and lots of review from the external crypto and security community. A deep well of technical talent.
yurt3 10y ago
How does I2P defend against traffic analysis attacks?
qrmn 10y ago
Respectably, no tool - be it I2P's garlic routing, Tor's onion routing or anything else - could ever provide "complete untraceable anonymity"; that is a huge (and potentially very harmful) misunderstanding of what these techniques can do, I strongly encourage you to learn more about them to correct that misconception. Both projects have designs which have inspired each other and have relative advantages and disadvantages. Technically, I like I2P, but I accept I may be somewhat biased there. Practically speaking, Tor has a much larger anonymity set because it is far more widely used and receives more support, with very well-established volunteer outproxies. I would never criticise anyone for contributing to either: Tor in particular has the widest practical impact of any tool in this space. This distributed random idea is a very impressive achievement; I'm glad to see it work in the wild! Congratulations. I'm not sure what you mean about "stigma". Any reasonably effective solution in such a politically-charged space as the anonymity and privacy of human communication is likely to become controversial to some degree.
htns 10y ago
Isn't I2P still "peer-to-peer" by default? That is, the fact your IP is connected to I2P is broadcast to everyone. That makes every disconnection an opportunity to trace you, directly and by elimination. It's especially bad with torrents, which are probably the most popular use of I2P.

I still really don't understand why people keep developing Tor over I2P - I2P is clearly the better protocol offering complete untraceable anonymity and a chance to secceed from the stigma of Tor...

cyphar 10y ago

I've heard that I2P tends to add experimental features that don't have any rigorous analysis of the privacy impact. So there's that.

praptak 10y ago

Anything that replaces Tor will get the stigma of Tor.

arca_vorago 10y ago

I think tor has more marketing and mindshare than I2P, and thats why you see tor more than it. I would like to see a more in depth comparison of the two, do you know of a good one?

MajesticHobo 10y ago

> offering complete untraceable anonymity Your argument falls apart the moment you claim this.

zmanian 10y ago

Tor is a solution for both anonynmity & privacy and censorship evasion. I2P is oriented primarily towards anonymity and privacy. I2P has an attractive anonymous service design and can run applications like Bittorrent over it. But it also developed basically by 3 people in New Zealand. Tor has more funding b/c of censorship evasion features being attractive to funders. Successes in the anonynmity feature set like SecureDrop. A vibrant academic community with conferences etc. Lots and lots of review from the external crypto and security community. A deep well of technical talent.

yurt3 10y ago

How does I2P defend against traffic analysis attacks?

qrmn 10y ago

Respectably, no tool - be it I2P's garlic routing, Tor's onion routing or anything else - could ever provide "complete untraceable anonymity"; that is a huge (and potentially very harmful) misunderstanding of what these techniques can do, I strongly encourage you to learn more about them to correct that misconception. Both projects have designs which have inspired each other and have relative advantages and disadvantages. Technically, I like I2P, but I accept I may be somewhat biased there. Practically speaking, Tor has a much larger anonymity set because it is far more widely used and receives more support, with very well-established volunteer outproxies. I would never criticise anyone for contributing to either: Tor in particular has the widest practical impact of any tool in this space. This distributed random idea is a very impressive achievement; I'm glad to see it work in the wild! Congratulations. I'm not sure what you mean about "stigma". Any reasonably effective solution in such a politically-charged space as the anonymity and privacy of human communication is likely to become controversial to some degree.

htns 10y ago

Isn't I2P still "peer-to-peer" by default? That is, the fact your IP is connected to I2P is broadcast to everyone. That makes every disconnection an opportunity to trace you, directly and by elimination. It's especially bad with torrents, which are probably the most popular use of I2P.