I2P - The Best Darknet

what is a darknet?

I personally define darknet as a subset of the Internet at which websites are very hard to trace back to their owners.

what is I2P?

I2P (Invisible Internet Project) is a darknet. Websites on I2P are called "eepsites".

I2P does NOT have exit nodes by default.

why I2P over tor?

There are a few reasons. First of all: on I2P, by default, everybody is a node! Everybody on I2P contributes to the network, while on Tor it's opt-in.

I2P is very configurable. You can make connections on I2P cross one, two, three, four... however many nodes you want! By default, an I2P request crosses 12 nodes before you get a response.

I2P also has centralized domain registries. Let's take an example.

This website's full I2P url is uaj764grtgolz4jmlkmqkrin3h5jnemoye6pl7lpobpaoyi6t2pq.b32.i2p. However, if your I2P client uses reg.i2p or stats.i2p as a domain registry, you can just type in justzvan.i2p.

Centralization is bad and you should always use the long-form URLs. It's just a nice convenience.

when is Tor better?

Censorship-heavy environments will always be Tor's upside. I2P doesn't provide exit nodes which are important so the users can read news and use regular apps like Signal.

Also, since on I2P everybody is a node by default, censorship-heavy places may find out that you have been using I2P.

Tor is an important project. It's importance is almost always underestimated.

For more information on I2P please see Denshi's article on I2P.