[tor-talk] [tor-dev] Freenet + Onioncat: Is the traffic welcome?

[grarpamp]

On 6/22/16, konstant at mail2tor.com <konstant at mail2tor.com> wrote:
> I posted steps on how to connect Freenet nodes over Onioncat and Garlicat
> for Tor/I2P. I am looking to scale it into an Opennet inside Tor with a
> lot of peers:
>
> https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/devl/2016-June/039056.html
> https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/devl/2016-June/039059.html

Cool.

You may want to review two recent threads regarding
# bittorrent
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2016-June/041355.html
# onioncat
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2016-April/010847.html

(Some portion of these threads are on tor-talk, tor-dev, cypherpunks,
etc so you'll need to search those for full context.
They may span multiple months so you'll have to dig those out.
And note that torproject's archives destroy useful things like
cc, attachments, crypto sigs. Cypherpunks is intact.)

> Is the extra traffic desirable in Tor? Reading asn's comment, I was under
> the impression that you are interested in adding higher latency traffic
> such as Freenet or mixnets for better anonymity:
> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/crowdfunding-future-hidden-services

>From the operations and UX side, as opposed to theory and
design side...

Some [officials] within torproject will decry traffic, and have even
gone so far as to suggest they'll deploy coded countermeasures
(which since the traffic is anonymous, and the code is opensource,
doesn't work and kills someone else's good as well). In the end,
just like video on clearnet, users and their traffic will come, and
utilize whatever capacity and features they can, nothing you can
do about it.

A more qualified thought... I find ongoing intentional exclusive
use of exits so people can basically get their trivial entertainment
LOL's using filesharing apps such as bittorrent (or any other use that
is known to tax networks)... to be rather immature to unethical.
However I do see fine use in performing initial import of clearnet
datasets via exits (if maintaining anonymity of such import action is
necessary), provided they then cut their clients over to run exclusively
within the anonymous networks. (In the case of bittorrent, that
means disconnecting the split horizon network path to clearnet,
swapping out clearnet trackers for trackers within the anonymous
overlay networks, using PEX / DHT within those nets, and possibly
managing running two instances over various datasets.) ie:
Someone might import the latest opensource unix iso's via clearnet
without use of exits, then cut and seed exclusively via anon overlay nets.
Same person might need to import the latest political leaks and
civil rights videos via exits, then cut and seed similarly.

> Using both projects in tandem can finally realize the vision of FreeHaven.
> You are the best at firewall circumvention, performance and accessing the
> web, Freenet supplies users with censorship resistant publishing and p2p
> services. There is a HotPETs 16 paper co-authored by George Danezis on
> renewing interest in anonymous storage networks:
>
> http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/M.Isaakidis/p/isaakidis-p2pstorageservices-hotpets16.pdf

I agree that linking the various overlays, features, services, and users
together is generally a good thing. I tend to argue IPv6 for that since
so many of todays apps and users speak that. However there's certainly
other shims, proxies, and addressing stacks people can dream and
code up, particularly for asynchronous / non-real-time messaging and
file like storage services.

Users also need to research and think clearly about any security
and privacy impact using such links may have on them.