I2p

Is it necessary? Unlike Tor that provides with a browser that just works and is preconfigured to use Tor, in I2p, you will need to download router application and set it up manually. Its not as difficult as you may be thinking and its fun. In this post, I will illustrate how I2p can be installed on different operating systems Windows Download I2p You can download i2p from their Official Website. To do so, follow the link to download i2p for Windows  https://geti2p.net/download  and download the .exe file to your desired location. Install I2p Double click on the downloaded .exe file and run it. It will first ask you for the language. Select your desired language and click Ok. Then click on Next and accept the public domain license. Then click Next and select installation path. If possible, leave the defaults. Then click Next, here, you can set it to start I2p at boot time that I typically discourage. Click Next and installation will start. After it is finished, click N

What is this all about? I2p, similar to Tor has its own hidden services, the ones that end with .i2p at the end of the URL. These sites are generally known as EEPSites. In case you didnt notice, EEPSites is formed from the word DeepSites after removing the letter 'D'. However, unlike Tor where all you need is a .onion address, in I2p, its alot different. In this post, I will attempt to explain just that and at the end, I will provide some hidden services websites that I most frequently use. How is it different from browsing normal websites? In I2p, as I have explained in my Introduction to I2p blog, there is no such thing as conventional ip addresses, instead, hashes are used to identify the devices in a network. These hashes are generally 500+ characters long. To make it conventional,  Base32 encoded form of those hashes can be used instead. Generally, you will only ever need the base64 version of that hash to browse the website once. But Base64 addresses are long and

What do I expect by this point? By this point, I expect you have already installed and got to the I2p router console window. If you havent already, you may need to follow the steps for your operating system from  Page 2: Install I2p on your desktop  if you have missed it. After this point, it is operating system independent. Maby I should again mention that if you didnt get to the router console window automatically, you may need to manually open up your browser and goto the link: 127.0.0.1:7657/home (For security reasons, you cant just click on this link. You will need to copy paste the link manually into your browser) to manually start your router console. After the router console window has started Set appropriate Bandwidth Fig: i2p router console Your router console should look like the one above. The first thing I suggest you do is scroll down and select to configure bandwidth. There, you should setup KBps in and KBps out as per your network bandwidth that you want

What is a Darkweb? Darkweb is often times a computer network that require special software and/or authorization to access contents within them. They are an overlay network of computer that exist on top of the normal internet. You can simply imagine them as a big VPN network, but instead, they anonymize all the computers in the network using various techniques such as Onion Routing, Garlic Routing and Content fragmentation and distribution over all the nodes, etc. They are mostly peer to peer decentralized networks with exception being Tor. People use these darkweb mostly for privacy and anonymity. Because they are anonymous, they have also been favored by criminals to perform their illicit activities. However, thanks to Police raid, their percentage fairly remains low. Some of the example of popular Darkweb networks are Tor, I2p, FreiFunk, NetSukuku, and many others... In this blog however, I will only focus on I2p, mainly because I believe it doesnt get as much appreciation as it d