forum.i2p ~ View topic

I2Phile Joined: 10 May 2005 Posts: 443

Updated 2010-01-03 for release 0.7.8

- What clients are supported on I2P?

I2PSnark, I2P-BT, I2P-BOB-BT, I2PRufus, Robert, PyBit, I2PSnarkXL, Transmission, and Azureus (but see below for more information on Azureus).

- What client do you recommend?

I2PSnark. It is built-in to I2P so it requires no installation. Also, it is under active development, and support is available. The others are standalone applications which are more difficult to install and use. Azureus in particular is a challenge to set up. New users in particular should try I2PSnark first. To use i2psnark go to link: http://localhost:7657/i2psnark/ in your browser.

After you have tried out i2psnark, and feel comfortable with i2p bittorrent in general, try out some of the standalone clients that have advanced features and are under active development. Try out Robert, for example.

- How do I get Azureus and its I2P Plugin to work?

We don't know. We've heard from numerous people who followed the published instructions and couldn't make it work. We haven't heard from anybody who _did_ get it to work in a long time. And there's nobody around I2P that does know how. We strongly recommend that new users start with the built-in I2PSnark. Once you have become familiar with I2P, if you decide you really really want Azureus, feel free to try. If you are successful, let us know how you did it.

- Why are downloads so slow on I2P torrents?

Two reasons. The encryption and routing within the I2P network adds a substantial amount of overhead and limits bandwidth. Also, most torrents on I2P have very few peers compared to torrents on the standard internet. However, it's a lot faster than it used to be, and we continue to work on performance improvements.

- How do I make it faster?

Two key settings are the inbound and outbund bandwidth limiters on link: http://localhost:7657/config.jsp . With the default settings of 32KBps you will generally get no better than 15KBps data transfer in I2PSnark. Increasing the settings (but keeping within your actual connection limitations) will increase the potential transfer rate for I2PSnark.

Bittorrent uses a "tit for tat" algorithm. The more you upload to other people, the more they will download to you. One of the best ways to get faster download speeds is to increase your upstream bandwidth. This is part of the bittorrent protocol, it is not unique to I2P.

Tunnel length settings are a tradeoff between performance and anonymity. The default length of 2 + 0 in i2psnark (i.e., tunnels of length 2) works fine for most people. Feel free to adjust the settings if you want more performance or more anonymity. Increasing the number of tunnels may also help performance.

If you are on a high bandwidth connection (greater than 1 Mbit upstream), it may help to increase tunnel quantities each direction to 4, 5, or even 6.

If you are running lots of torrents you should increase the maximum memory size in wrapper.config to avoid out-of-memory exceptions (OOMs). Change wrapper.java.maxmemory from 128 to 256 or even higher. You must completely shutdown the router (not just a restart) and then start it again for this to take effect.

- Can I use a non-I2P Bittorrent client with I2P acting as a proxy to connect to peers outside I2P?

No.

- Can I use a non-I2P Bittorrent client with I2P at all?

No.

- Can I connect to non-I2P torrents or peers from within I2P?

No.

- Can I connect to I2P torrents or peers from outside I2P?

No.

- Do any I2P Bittorrent clients support DHT within I2P?

No.

- Where do I get bittorrent clients?

Most clients are available for download at link: http://echelon.i2p/

- How do I get external clients to work with the I2P Router?

Most external clients use one of two application bridges built-in to I2P - "SAM" or "BOB". Neither is enabled by default in the router; go to the configuration clients page in your router, and enable the appropriate one for your client.

- Where do I get I2P-BT? How do I install it?

link: http://i2p-bt.postman.i2p/

- Where do I get I2PRufus? How do I install it?

link: http://forum.i2p2.de/viewtopic.php?t=1244
link: http://forum.i2p2.de/viewtopic.php?t=1323

- What trackers are available on I2P?

There are links to several I2P trackers on the i2psnark page link: http://localhost:7657/i2psnark/ .

- Can I set up a tracker? Where is the tracker software? How do I install it?

Sure, you can set up a tracker, although you should get some experience with I2P first. Also, the current trackers aren't that heavily loaded, so we don't really need more, unless you want to focus on a certain theme or translate the tracker to a new language. Current trackers on I2P run modified versions of Bytemonsoon or opentracker. One snapshot of the Bytemonsoon source is in CVS. Postman has other mods. The opentracker source is in the monotone repo. There are no installation docs for Bytemonsoon. Opentracker has a short doc. Have fun.

- What are the torrent size limitations on I2P?

The following limits are imposed by I2PSnark which is the most popular client. Other clients may have more liberal limits but exceeding the I2PSnark limits will drastically reduce the number of peers you can connect with.

Max. torrent size: 20GB; Max. piece size: 2MB; Max. number of files: 512; Max. number of pieces: 10240.

- Any other torrent creation guidelines?

If possible (less than 512 files, for example), and the files aren't very compressible (movies or music), generate a multifile torrent rather than zipping the files. That way, people with completed downloads can continue to seed and enjoy the content simultaneously, without doubling the required storage.

Using RAR or ZIP on relatively uncompressible content also doesn't make much sense.

Given current download speeds, torrents of less than 2GB are best. If there are multiple large files, split them up into separate torrents, and seed them one at a time, spaced a couple days apart, to allow faster completion and get more seeds.

- How safe is I2P Bittorrent?

Anonymity is not a boolean, it depends on your threat model. I2P is a work in progress. Use it at your own risk. See http://www.i2p2.i2p/ for more information. The I2P-only bittorrent clients are potentially safer than Azureus, which can connect to I2P and non-I2P clients and trackers simultaneously.

- Where can I get help on I2P Bittorrent?

#i2p on I2P IRC is probably the quickest. Posting a question on on forum.i2p is also fine.

- Where can I find news on new torrents?

link: http://planet.i2p/ or the individual tracker sites.

- How can I help?

I2P Bittorrent clients push a large amount of data through the I2P network. Therefore, I2P Bittorrent provides a testbed for many I2P subsystems, and it especially helps investigation and improvement of I2P's reliability and performance.

Testers of development snapshots in monotone are often needed. Checkins are announced on #i2p-dev, on echelon.i2p and on zzz.i2p.

Post bug reports or feature requests on #i2p, Syndie, or this forum.

If you would like to help with the coding on I2PSnark or I2P in general and have some knowledge of Java, let us know on #i2p in IRC. Many of the alternative clients are in Python.
Check on IRC #i2p to see which clients are in active development. if you want to work on them, check on IRC #i2p to find out the status.

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Posted 18-Mar-2007
Updated 21-Apr-2007
Updated 31-Oct-2008
Updated 20-May-2009
Updated 03-Jan-2010

I2Pisshead Joined: 03 Feb 2007 Posts: 57

Thanks for the detailed update. Another practical drawback of running Azureus and i2p at the same time, besides it not working Smile

, is that of memory usage. On my system (Windows XP) page file usage shows at over 500 MB sometimes with both i2p and Azureus running, even without a router console (IE7 browser) open.
_________________
nothome27

Joined: 24 May 2007 Posts: 3

How do I check the signatures (Linux)

You will have installed gpg2 (cf OpenPGP) see man gpg or gpg2
Then get the public key of jrandom
gpg2 ##keyserver subkeys.pgp.net ##recv-keys 33DC8D49
you will see
gpg: requesting key 33DC8D49 from hkp server subkeys.pgp.net
gpg: key 33DC8D49: "jrandom <jrandom@i2p.net>"

Download i2p source or exe file and their signatures, and verify

gpg2 ##verify i2p-0.6.1.28.tar.bz2.sig i2p-0.6.1.28.tar.bz2
gpg2 ##verify i2pinstall.exe.sig i2pinstall.exe

Guest

I alsow use Azureus(2.3.0.4).

Guest

But the Downloads are very slow, the Upload is ok, i think downloads in I2PSnark are faste.

I've also found that using the latest java/i2p/azureus builds, following the published instructions and ensuring a few options are specified azureus will work ok(but slow) on i2p. The options I'm sure are necessary are:

checked>connection>transport encryption>require encrypted transport

checked>connection>transport encryption>allow non-encrypted outgoing connections if encrypted connection attempt fails

checked>connection>transport encryption>allow non-encrypted incoming connections

unchecked>tracker>client>send java version and os name

unchecked>tracker>client>enable udp tracker client protocol

unchecked>tracker>client>do not announce the listening port to the tracker

unchecked>tracker>client>enable key passing to tracker for enhanced security

unchecked>tracker>client>use different peer identities for tracker and data communication

I'm not sure what other settings I may have changed from their defaults to get this working as this came after a semi-sucessful traffic-shaping avoidance stint but, all the above gave me tracker errors or else just cut me off from all other peers. Also Starting order seems to matter, azureus first then i2p. As a side note, while going through az's options I was looking at the distributed db options and saw the ip override option and was wondering if the tunnel destination was put in there would the ddb work over i2p?

And also, I believe an updated azurereus w/i2p guide would be a big boon to the community. I haven't found a torrent client I like better though lphant comes close(exept no i2p support, yet?), and getting a bunch of az users sharing bandwidth on i2p can't hurt, right?

Cheers

Guest

I tried I2P using utorrent and it seems to work.

I opened the 'options->preferences' and set the following proxy server info:
Type: HTTP
Proxy: localhost
Port: 4444
Use proxy server for peer-to-peer connections: checked

On the I2P router web page (http://localhost:7657/config.jsp), I can see:
Peers
Active: 13/34
Fast: 8
High capacity: 12
Well integrated: 7
Failing: 0
Known: 434
Bandwidth in/out
1s: 0.43/0.89KBps
5m: 0.49/0.60KBps
Total: 0.60/0.80KBps
Used: 6.37MB/8.67MB

Does it mean it works? Is there a way to be sure?

zzz, don't forget that people can get the more up-to-date i2p-bt...
Since the old client is quite broken.
See:
http://forum.i2p/viewtopic.php?t=2691

Guest

How to set up Azureus (Vuze) to work with I2P:
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/plugin_details.php?plugin=azneti2p&docu=1#1

vv

I2Phelch0r Joined: 26 Nov 2008 Posts: 209

Hi vv!

That guide is horrible out of date!
I could not get azureus running with it (actual azureus, I do not want to run ancient buggy versions).
_________________
eche|on

http://echelon.i2p

And now we add Robert to the list of clients.
Laughing

@zzz -> should update the original to reflect a few new things, and split off the chatter?
Wink

I2Phile Joined: 10 May 2005 Posts: 443

^^ OP updated ^^