After the Mullvad fiasco I decided to stop using VPNs all together, since port forwarding is always going to be a problem on all of them, if you read the reasons why Mullvad had to shut down that service.
There is a better way using i2p which conceals your IP and makes it impossible for anyone to know what or if you’re downloading at all! No DMCA notices, no problem.
I wrote this small guide to another comment and figured I’d share it in its own post since I’m seeing so many people ask for VPN recommendations.
So there are 2 main implementations of i2p. First is the main Dev’s Java client here https://geti2p.net/en/download
The other is i2pd, which is C++.
I use the Java one personally but both would work. Someone posted back on reddit a guide on /r/i2p for qbittorrent, which is what I use now for this too. The guide was shared as a public torrent you can download with this info hash: 3f1d51095f9b116739172c1bced149acf2b10692
Use that hash with any of the various public trackers and you should be able to download that guide.
But if you just want a basic setup, that Java client comes with i2psnark, which is a Bittorrent client already setup.
The only other thing you want to do is go and search the biggest tracker for stuff, which is called PaTracker, Postman’s tracker. http://tracker2.postman.i2p, only accessible from i2p itself, which you’ll need to have setup and running first to view.
This tracker needs more seeders and uploaders in general, and by improving those things service for everyone is better. So the more the merrier.
Thanks! Feel free to ask any questions, there also might be other people who use i2p now for torrenting. I’m sure they’ll help too.
I2p is not a substitution for a proxy. I2p is an end-to-end encryption Network and unless it’s changed over the past couple of years it’s incredibly slow for any multimedia transfer. Coupled on top of that you have to have the knowledge to be able to set up your full system to route all traffic through it. So using it as a a security step for most people is already out of the question. It’s not like a VPN where you can just plug and play. Having your entire network communicate through l2p is going to make everything substantially slower.
You don’t need to route all traffic, just the traffic from your bittorrent client.
Download speeds have improved significantly as there are more people on there seeding than ever.
i2p is significantly better than a proxy, you jump through multiple hosts/tunnels before reaching the service.
Also it isn’t all network traffic at all, just services connecting through i2p like a web browser you have setup to use it.
And what do I gain with this over having my torrent client bound to a wireguard interface running through a commercial VPN provider?
And what do I gain
Literally nothing.
Doesn’t this still have the same vulnerability of the potential for a hostile takeover similar to tor? Also, is there any way to use i2p to bypass geoblocking? If not that’s a major reason why I and many people use vpns.
So no, i2p won’t interact with the clearnet at all. So it doesn’t help with access to clearnet sites that are geoblocked. I never used VPNs for geoblocking specifically, just for torrenting, so this wasn’t in my list of use cases.
It makes sense sticking with a VPN if you really need to access a site that is blocked in your country. Or you could use Tor for that, but Tor has its own issues.
Also I’m still not familiar enough with I2P to know if it’s vulnerable to hostile takeover. It IS a completely different protocol from Tor though, so my guess would be it doesn’t have that same issue.
I don’t even use VPNs for torrenting lol. I use them only for either geoblocking or scrambling my IP address for practical clearnet purposes such as signing up multiple accounts. Torrenting is not prosecuted or even mentioned in my country. The only issue I could have is my ISP not liking my download volume and throttling for a short period of time to counteract my “abuse” of the network.
hostile takeover similar to tor
yes but the NSA/FBI are not going after you for seeding family guy, they’re there to get the CSAM and drugs
Could i2p reasonably even handle this kind of traffic? Torrenting is one of the most network intensive workloads I can think of.
Only one way to find out. Also, the more people participating, the better for everyone. We have the main developer over at the I2P sublem* so feel free to ask there.
*or whatever they’re called
The correct term is Lemming
The official term is “community”, actually.
Can you only seed to people on i2p?
You can cross-seed with people over clearnet using qBittorrent or BiglyBT, but that also exposes your IP to clearnet people. So you could get DMCA notices if it is copywrited content.
Otherwise typically no you will only be downloading and seeding with people on I2P if you haven’t chosen to cross-seed.
Then this is no replacement for VPN…
Thanks.
It’s worked well enough for me. Keep in mind this is just for public trackers. Private trackers shouldn’t be used with a VPN anyway and you don’t need to use i2p for them.
Why would you not use a VPN with private trackers? VPN all the things!
Typically it is just unnecessary. And believe it or not VPNs will slow you down too.
but that also exposes your IP to clearnet people. So you could get DMCA notices if it is copywrited content.
So, for pretty much everyone this is the same as torrenting without a VPN at all.
See this comment for seeding to both clearnet and i2p. I2PSnark (the builtin torrent client) only interacts with I2P, but biglybt can do bridge.
But the multiple jumps make it very slow.
There’s a reason we want port forwarding for near direct connections for torrenting.
That’s not why port forwarding is important. Port forwarding is needed so that fresh peers can communicate with you and join the swarm. That act has the side-effect of speeding up transfers by allowing more people into the swarm spreading the transfer across more potential seeds/peers
I’m skeptical of changing what works. Haven’t had any issues with the VPN I use. I’ll keep this in mind for sure nonetheless.
Honestly that is fine. Just consider this to be one of the times you hear about I2P. I also don’t typically start paying much attention to something unless I’ve heard it like 3 or more times.
What mullvad fiasco??
I wouldn’t call it a “fiasco”, but they’re disabling port-forwarding for everyone on July 1st. They say it’s because people are hosting “unfavorable” content and it’s getting their IPs banned. Their article
:C
I2pd + Qbittorrent is the best solution. Simple to setup and works great, the only catch is that right now you need to use the Qbittorrent alpha version (because it has i2p support) or just wait for the release.
Highly recommend experimenting with i2p, there’s cool stuff on it as well!
And if more people join i2p to torrent the faster the speeds will get. You are a seeder of the i2p network basically. (Which is great!)
Absolutely agree. I setup qBittorrent to use it and my experience has been great once everything is setup to work, which I’ll admit was tricky trying to use the latest alpha release. Using i2psnark is much easier for most folks for now I think.
It was not a fiasco. It showed us that they can be trusted.
What Mullvad fiasco? I’m still using them :|
It’s not really a fiasco at all. OP seems to be blowing it way out of proportion. For the vast majority of users it’s not a big deal at all. They are disallowing port forwarding due to how many letters/threats they’ve gotten from their datacenters and law enforcement.
This is very annoying, because it makes it hard for other peers to connect with my server and it will make it harder to seed. This is bad, I will likely switch next year.
Mullvad stopped port forwarding due to being harassed by law enforcement agencies.
What about port forwarding opens Mullvad up to more scrutiny from law enforcement?
Here is Mullvad’s statement on the changes and why, which should hopefully elaborate details pertaining to your question.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense.
Basically dirty fuckers ruining it for everyone else.
Torrenting? I don’t know, I’m not an expert.
In general, torrenting doesn’t require port forwarding.
How well does i2p mesh with private trackers? Would they be able to track up/down ratios?
I’m hoping DHT and PEX support comes to libtorrent eventually so that qbittorrent can use DHT/PEX with I2P and not just http trackers. I think only i2psnark and a few other clients support it right now. I encourage everyone to cross seed their public torrents to the I2P network and upload to patracker to support the network. Unfortunately, for niche content and private trackers VPNs/seedboxes are a necessity
PSA: qbittorrent has early access (still in development) for native i2p torrenting. I recommend waiting for that to be officially released
I have never used i2p but isn’t it pretty slow? I only have experience with Tor and it’s not recommended to torrent through Tor. I did listen to the interviews of both Tor and i2p on a Privacy podcast but it was a while back
It’s one of those things that gets faster the longer I2P software is running. As I understand it, it takes time to building link betoween yourself and other members of the network in a safe and secure way, but once they’re built up that extends your reach and speed
So basically the torrent over i2p speed depends on how many torrent users use i2p as weel, as I understand, i2p torrent node will not connect ti a non-i2p node.
Am I understanding this correctly?
Basically, yes
Doesn’t this make every user the equivalent of a Tor exit node? Meaning you’ll have possibly dodgy traffic appearing to come from your internet service?
No. I2P works differently than Tor. There are no exit nodes, because there are no exits. I2P is separate from all clearnet traffic. For example, you cannot browse reddit.com from within i2p, like you can with tor.
Gotcha. So its basically a large, decentralized overlay network…ie you can’t use it to “privately” access clearnet content as you can with a VPN. Sounds like the headline is misleading.
That’s exactly correct, yes. A VPN is still useful for accessing clearnet websites that you want to conceal from your ISP. I’m arguing that you don’t need to go to clearnet websites for most of the stuff you download from public trackers. private trackers are always going to have great quality releases, but I could see them moving over to i2p at some point as well. Though DMCA shouldn’t be much of a concern for private trackers anyway.
It’s a entirely different protocol then? That’s smart actually. I need to look into it.
Completely different protocol, yep. Has nothing to do with Tor really. The only similarity is that both are ‘darknets’
I’ll read up on this. It’s new for me and thr first time hearing of it, but we should always consider working alternatives
Fuck, this is how I find out Mullvad is dropping support for port forwarding.
I already have a protonmail account, guess I’ll get the VPN too now. My entire setup relies on using wireguard on the firewall level, so another solution like i2p won’t work
That’s fair. I like proton : )
Interesting stuff, I had heard of i2p before, but mostly in connection with darknet and not yet with torrenting, but it‘s something I might play around with now that I know.
Yeh I had tried torrenting on Tor a LONG time ago but people made it clear to not do that on Tor for one reason or another. But on i2p, the devs made a torrent client directly into the software. It was one of their features and something they want people to use.
Huh, I’ve been using a VPN for torrent without setting up any kind of port forwarding! Can someone explain why you might want to do this?
Port forwarding, which Mullvad was allowing until recently, allows other people to connect to your bittorrent client that is downloading/seeding torrents. This makes it easier for you to find others who can either help you download, or seed for other users in the network.
Basically it improves download speeds and allows you to easily upload to everyone else.
I see, thanks for clarifying! Even without port-forwarding, I’m able to make some connections. Is there just a more limited set of destination IPs I’m able to connect to? What dictates whether or not I’m able to connect?
Yes! You still get to make outgoing connections to anybody who can accept incoming connections.
Port forwarding makes it so you can accept incoming connections.
Oh also for your last question: Firewalls and NAT. NAT stands for network address translation. NAT is what these services use for getting people to ‘share’ ip addresses in a pool and then map ports to each person/host. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation
Interesting. So when I’m connecting to peers for downloading, these connections can be initiated in both ways? And since I’m not currently port-forwarding, this means I can only actively find peers, rather than passively accepting incoming connections?
That’s exactly correct!
Cool, I learned something today! Thanks :)
