Differences to TOR
The main characteristic in which I2P differs from TOR is the focus of the project.
While TOR was designed with the intention to enable anonymous internet brows-
ing, I2P’s focus is to provide an anonymous network, isolated inside the internet,
offering various protocols and applications within. It is however possible to utilize
I2P outproxies to reach the internet and thus enable anonymous web browsing.
Another difference to the TOR network is, that I2P tunnels can only be used unidirectional compared to TOR’s bidi-
rectional tunnels. Also, as mentioned in Section 1.1 I2P uses garlic encryption
where TOR uses onion encryption. Both implementations are based on layered
encryption, garlic encryption offering the possibility to store multiple messages
inside the innermost layer [3].
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~semu/docs/2011_seminar_ehlert_i2p.pdf - must read
Introduction to I2P
I2P is a peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay network which allows participants to interact
anonymously within this network. Similar to TOR (The Onion Router) I2P is a
mix network
which relies on routing data trough multiple peers to
render tracing
virtually impossible [1]. The project was rst proposed in 2003, having its roots
in the Invisible Internet Project (IIP), an anonymous real time communication
project. Development has actively been going on since this time. Today I2P
already o ers a range of applications which can be used inside the network such
as anonymous web browsing, chatting, le-sharing and e-mailing [
