i2p.www/i2p2www/pages/site/comparison/freenet.html

{% extends "global/layout.html" %}
{% block title %}{{ _('I2P Compared to Freenet') }}{% endblock %}
{% block content %}

<h2>Freenet</h2>
<i><a href="http://freenetproject.org/">[Freenet]</a></i>

<p>{% trans -%}
Freenet is a fully distributed, peer to peer anonymous publishing network, offering 
secure ways to store data, as well as some approaches attempting to address the loads
of a flash flood.  While Freenet is designed as a distributed data store, people have
built applications on top of it to do more generic anonymous communication, such as 
static websites and message boards.
{%- endtrans %}</p>

<p>{% trans tahoe='https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs' -%}
Compared to I2P, Freenet offers some substantial benefits - it is a distributed data
store, while I2P is not, allowing people to retrieve the content published by others 
even when the publisher is no longer online.  In addition, it should be able to 
distribute popular data fairly efficiently.  I2P itself does not and will not provide 
this functionality.  On the other hand, there is overlap for users who simply want to 
communicate with each other anonymously through websites, message boards, file sharing
programs, etc.  There have also been some attempts to develop a distributed data 
store to run on top of I2P,
(most recently a port of <a href="{{ tahoe }}">Tahoe-LAFS</a>)
but nothing is yet ready for general use.
{%- endtrans %}</p>

<p>{% trans -%}
However, even ignoring any implementations issues, there are some concerns 
about Freenet's algorithms from both a scalability and anonymity perspective, owing 
largely to Freenet's heuristic driven routing.  The interactions of various techniques 
certainly may successfully deter various attacks, and perhaps some aspects of the 
routing algorithms will provide the hoped for scalability.  Unfortunately, not much
analysis of the algorithms involved has resulted in positive results, but there is still
hope.  At the very least, Freenet does provide substantial anonymity against an attacker
who does not have the resources necessary to analyze it further.
{%- endtrans %}</p>

{% endblock %}