Name of requestor: *

Email address: *

Phone number: *

Organization: I2P - The Invisible Internet Project

Country: Belgium

Project name: I2P - The Invisible Internet Project

Abstract (explain the whole project):

I2P functions as an overlay network, on top of the internet. It relays messages through several peers and encrypts these messages multiple times (creating an 'onionlike' structure, which is why the technique is known as 'onion routing'. Each peer can peel off a single layer of the message encryption).This structure allows anonymity for the sender and receiver of messages. Applications can run on top of this network, either by using it as a regular proxy to other nodes (browsers use it this way), or by implementing the I2P API.

Amongst the main features of I2P are:

• Anonymity for sender and receiver of messages through onion routing and cover traffic provided by the network
• Internal anonymous services (websites, e-mail, torrent trackers, irc servers…)
• An active project, with regular releases worked on by multiple developers. A growing project as well, with increasing numbers in both developers and users.
• Multiple programs using the I2P API to provide extra services (anonymous blogging software, torrent applications,
• By default, all users route traffic for each other, which adds cover traffic to the network, improving the anonymity of the users and the capacity of the network.
• Development of applications on top of I2P in any programming language, due to a simple socket interface for programs.

Describe your target community:

I2P is aimed in general towards people seeking the anonymity that can be provided by a low-latency network. The project is aimed specifically towards providing services INSIDE the network (contrary to, for example, Tor, which aims to provide anonymous access to websites and other services that are available on the 'regular' net), and people interested in these. That can mean people wanting to put up an anonymous website or torrent tracker, or people wishing to make use of only these anonymous services.

Requested amount: 2360 euro

Which parts of the project will NLnet's contribution be used for?

The contribution will be used to fund a developer to work on the creation/porting of a distributed data store for I2P. This would allow providing internal services (to some degree) while the original content owner is offline, automatic distributed mirroring of content and redundant hosting of updates to I2P or its applications. Especially providing easy redundancy to the I2P updates would be extremely beneficial to the project. It's one of the few points where I2P is still centralized (only a few internal websites that host the updates). The work would happen during the summer.

Compare your own project with existing projects; what's new and original?

Unlike many other projects, I2P is extremely dynamic and almost entirely distributed. There are no central communication points to distribute data about others peers (there is a 'seednode' system, but it's dynamic: if any seednode falls away, it will automatically get replaced). Each peer checks speed and reliability of others peer for himself (so nobody else needs to be trusted).

Also, by default, each peer routes data for others. This provides a lot of cover traffic for nodes, and allows a much higher bandwidth usage throughout the network.

How will you promote these developments to your target community?

The person working on the distributed data store will blog about the developments. Updates can also be prominently featured on the website front page. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, the developments will be incorporated into the I2P project, which will show the new features to the entire current community.