Could possibly run a benchmark if you can convince a few friends to use it and all visit the same site at the same time a few times and see how long it takes and average it and then do the same without I2P to compare
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sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days agoUh, no clue, that math on that would be very difficult to calculate, exceedingly complicated.
Have you ever been able to accurately predict the actual speed at which you download a torrent thats the size of a whole days worth of your regular internet usage?
Its basically a dynamic mesh network, you could run the math on a 100 different scenarios, get a 100 different results, and also no clue which scenario is more or less realistic.
The way I2P works is by step one, encrypting your traffic, step two, bundling that into a bigger packet made out of those network-near you’s traffic, that then has its own encryption around all that, and then that gets sent somewhere else.
So, upside is, even if your packets are intercercepted… its basically impossible to figure out which subpart of the bigger packet is whose.
You only have the keys to your part of that bigger packet.
Downside of all this is that all that packet bundling takes time, and is dynamically reconfigured, so… yeah, doing a ‘from principles’ estimate is… I dunno, find a chaos mathematician specialist for a more precise answer?
Possibly also worth mentioning: You can use I2P as basically something like Tor/a VPN, to access the non I2P net, the normal internet, you do this by using what is called an outproxy.
Theoretically an outproxy could be just giving all its packets right over to the NSA, but again, you’ve got that kind of encrypted packet sausage going on, and the network is much more complex and distributed than the Tor network’s smaller number of more centralized nodes.
Venator@lemmy.nz 3 days ago
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
Uh, no, unless by ‘a few friends’ you mean something like 500,000 people.
I2P is significantly slower than not I2P at visiting not I2P websites, something roughly between 10 to 100x times slower.
What was being asked was how much more agile the I2P network itself would become, if many more people used it.
With I2P, more users = more nodes to route packets through = smoother operation for the whole network.
This is the inverse of typical mass network paradigm, where more users = you have to throw more and more servers at handling requests, or, you get… well, basically what is still going on with Amazon US East 01 right now, functionally internet brownouts.
Precisely how much faster I2P would get with say, a million more daily users, thats very complex to even try and estimate.
But visting a normal internet website via I2P is always going to be much slower than via using a VPN or just straight connecting, because when I2P does that, its basically just acting as a giant maze of chained proxies + a way of encrypting packets that nothing else does.
Xanthobilly@lemmy.world 3 days ago
What do you recommend to read up on it more. I’ve read the wiki and this.. I’m wondering if there’s more to understand about browsing or connecting with content or like minded people.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
I am not sure about further ‘reading’, but the youtuber Mental Outlaw has a number of videos that do a pretty decent job of introducing and explaining I2P as a concept, as well as some videos that walk you through at least one way to do the actual setup process.
Though, some of those may be slightly out of date by now, those vids are I think a few years old at this point.
There’s also the difference between I2P proper, which I believe is still done wholly in Java, and I2PD, which is basically the same I2P, but rewritten in … either C or C++.
And, depending on how you’re going to want to use I2P on your system… as in uh, just a shunt or mode for a specific program, vs trying to reroute your whole OS’s traffic through it… that gets messy and complicated fast, depending on your setup, and exactly what you want to do.
Also, depending on your ISP / router situation, you may of may not have to futz with opening a port for I2P on your router firewall.
zip@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
I’m wondering the same thing! If you get an answer, would you mind letting me know, if it’s not too much trouble? I’ve read a lot about it, but it still feels like I’m missing/not understanding most of it. That may just me a ‘me & my crappy brain’ issue, though.