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Could anyone provide a reasonable explanation of how I2P (garlic routing) works, why is it is well suited for Monero (compared to possible alternatives)?

TBD
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1 Answers1

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As compared to Tor which is the most popular now:

  • i2pd serves the same efforts as Tor, but on a more p2p level, rather than relying on servers.
  • i2p lends itself more towards our workload.
  • Monero i2p nodes will also act as general i2p routers, which increases the size of the i2p mixnet and thus has an upshot for both.
  • Tor is optimised for low-bandwidth clients and high-bandwidth exit nodes, whereas i2p is optimised for internal hidden services. Thus, i2p is significantly faster when routing internal traffic.
  • i2p's floodfill routers (roughly analogous to Tor's directory servers) aren't hardcoded
  • i2p is a packet-switched network (as opposed to circuit-switched) which makes it more robust
  • no client-only peers, all peers route traffic and assist in building and running short-lived tunnels
  • TCP and UDP are supported, which means that things like OpenAlias can still work over i2p
pl55
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