I wouldn't go as far as saying it isn't possible - I'm running ~30 services for a combined ~110 tunnels on my router. But you would definitely want to do some kind of tunnel management if you were spinning up one Destination per site. I would suggest dropping to one or two inbound and outbound tunnels each for low load (probably dropping down to only one for sites that have no peers downloading for some time), and adding more as load increases. Vuze uses a similar mechanism to great effect (I've had as much as 200kB/s combined download speed for torrents over I2P, at which point Vuze will have IIRC six inbound and outbound tunnels).
The drawback of I2P is speed, with an average of about 30KBps, which is painfully slow compared to the 1-2MB/s that most torrenting sites offer. But consider this, the longer that you spend waiting to download a torrent over I2P rather than the Pirate Bay, the less time you'll spend getting sued. It's a trade-off.
One downside to this mechanism would be that it becomes easy to determine which sites are popular, by observing which ZeroNet Destinations have more tunnels. But maybe this isn't part of your threat model.
The setup Vuze uses is to have only two Destinations: one for torrents that it seeds inside I2P only, and the other for torrents that it simultaneously seeds on the public internet. This minimizes correlation between their public and anonymous activity.
If you've read my darknet series, you've probably got a pretty good idea of what I2P actually is and is capable of. One of the features of I2P is that it's designed with P2P file sharing in mind. Using a built-in service called I2PSnark, you can host and seed torrents quickly and easily!
The main problem with normal P2P trackers is that they're public. This means that ISPs and media companies can join the torrent swarm and obtain all of the IP addresses of the connected hosts. You'll know this happens when your service provider mails you a nice, shiny DMCA notice. Collect enough of these and the penalty can range from your provider banning you, to the company who owns the rights to whatever you pirated suing you.
You definitely don't want to be banned or sued, so we need to be more creative. Thankfully, we have a solution for this problem.
Anonymous File Sharing
We can use the I2P network to share files without the entire world knowing who is sharing them. Again, we have another easy step that keeps you safe on the Internet.
Step 1 Make Sure the Service Is Running
Open up a terminal and type:
$ i2prouter status
If it's not already started, you can start it back up with:
$ i2prouter start
Once we have it up and running, we simply point our web browser to:
You should now see the main I2PSnark screen. Notice how it's already running and ready by starting the I2P router. Your web browser is connecting to localhost, where the I2P service is bound via port 7657.
Step 2 Create Torrent
You have two options with this. You can take a .torrent file you already have along with its data and move it into:
~/.i2p/i2psnark
Or simply move data you wish to seed to the same directory.
Here we have a coupon code for cash off a PS3. I want to share this with my mates. So we go back to the I2Psnark page and fill in the path with our file.
Under Tracker, you may pick the one you wish to use, or add a new one altogether, depending on who and what you are sharing.
Click on Create Torrent.
I2PSnark creates the new .torrent file and places it in your queue. All you need to do is click the start button in the upper right-hand corner.
And you are seeding!
In Closing
Torrent Download
I2PSnark is not the only way to do this, and it is not the fastest either. However, it is easy, built in, and more than capable of tossing files up quickly.
I2p Torrent Sites
Do you know of any other tools to host torrents on I2P? Can you elaborate on the article? Null Byte would love to see it, and new ideas are always welcome. Leave your questions and concerns in the comments, or visit our forum!
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