The Whonix i2p guide has evolved over the years and it has never been as easy as it is now. But there is still no mention of what most people are going to be using i2p for in there, i2p torrenting. It is fine to list things like i2p-bote and Syndie and other things but not many use these. i2p is seeing a lot more users these days and it is being driven by its anonymity based torrenting. We are seeing feature-rich applications like Biglybt supporting i2p, and even mainstream clients like Qbittorrent throwing support behind i2p in its latest beta. I feel the guide is incomplete if it doesn’t discuss i2p torrenting.
I assume the neglect of mentioning the main use-case of i2p is because of this idea of a torrenting over Tor scenario? But is it even same? When you torrent inside i2p with its garlic routing can it really be considered a torrenting over Tor scenario in the traditional idea?
I have ran i2p torrenting inside the Workstation with i2psnark and Biglybt for years now, and going through Tor and i2p, you will be lucky to do over 50-100GB upload in your very best of days. You also rarely connect to more than a few seeders or peers at any one time.
With this, have I been putting myself more at risk for issues such as data correlation still by running i2p over Tor? Or does the fact it is i2p torrenting via garlic routing nullify any issues around creating too many Tor circuits no matter how popular an i2p magnet is?
i2p and i2p torrenting work great inside the Workstation. Biglybt works great inside the workstation. I just wish there was more information and acknowledgment that such setups are okay. Because more and more people are turning to i2p for the chief purpose of torrenting, and many people would rather choose to have Tor and Whonix protect their ip going into i2p, rather than a paid VPN.
I don’t know. To document this, this would need to be contributed. But beforehand, the first step would have to be the contact The Tor Project and ask in public about the implications on network load.
I made that account and email and then forgot the details. So will post from this account from now on.
I understand the concern. But are resources really that scarce in the Tor network? Or is this an old line of reasoning when the network was much smaller. If you do i2p over Tor in Whonix, your download and upload potential is tiny compared to what a normal Tor user can do by uploading files to hosting services or backup services, many which are catered to Tor users. i2p is slow, throwing Tor into the mix will make it even slower. You will rarely see yourself able to saturate your network doing i2p over Tor. The problem is that you are approaching it like it is normal torrenting and not i2p torrenting. And you don’t need this setup to send large files over the Tor network, it is easier just using Tor and Whonix alone for that.
Even if resources are scarce and this is not recommended, you should not just pretend it doesn’t exist. Your concerns should be addressed in the guide itself, because you can be sure most people that follow the guide will be using i2p for torrenting.