Spencer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Tails should either include BitTorrent software, explain how to
> safely use user installed BitTorrent software, or document the
> technical limitations behind not doing so.
It does include torrenting software, to some degree. If I2P is enabled
(by adding the i2p flag to the boot parameters), then users can use
I2PSnark to torrent inside the I2P network. Previously this was less
useful to users because of the lack of content (compared to clearnet),
but with the increase in bridging Vuze peers (seeding to both clearnet
and I2P), it is now a reasonable alternative. Any magnet URI from a
clearnet torrent can be fetched via I2P if there is a bridging peer
seeding it, or if the identical content is independently seeded inside
I2P. There is the obvious reduction in speed, but that is a standard
tradeoff of anonymous (non-VPN) torrenting.
(Tails could also install Vuze if they wanted a non-webUI torrent
client, but users would need to be educated on the fact that it is
only usable with I2P).
Perhaps something to this effect could be added to the documentation?
>
> The purpose of this thread is to discuss and conclude the matter
> of including/supporting BitTorrent in some way in Tails.
>
> This [0] is what we currently say. This [1] is the existing
> ticket.
>
>
> Research Thus Far (If there is more please include)
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> Tor Project Blog Post:
> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea
>
> Feedback from a user: I tried "apt-get install ctorrent"
> followed by "torify ctorrent torrentfile.torrent" while
> monitoring all communication with Wireshark. While ctorrent always
> generate new unique peer and key IDs each time the torrent is
> started, always report the same port, and always report IP=0.0.0.0,
> do not attempt to discover external ip, and no proxy bypasses
> happens, I concluded it may be safe to use.
>
> Besides that UDP does not work at all over Tor (DHT, uTP, UDP
> trackers etc...), which of course reduce the usefulness of a
> BitTorrent client in Tails, there is one real major problem I can
> see:
Side note: I2P supports UDP traffic, but only really for apps that are
built with I2P support (either native Java, or via the SAM API). Both
I2PSnark and Vuze have DHT support, and IIRC there is a proposal for
implementing uTP. We do also have a SOCKS tunnel that we haven't
finished adding UDP support to, because of a lack of dev
time/funds/incentive...
>
> Each connection to a peer is going through its own Tor circuit.
> This means Tor ends up building about 100 circuits, using about
> half of them at any time. It also means it easily reach download
> speeds of 3 megabyte/second. One basically never get over 150
> kilobytes/second through one single circuit (e.g. http downloads),
> so this DOES put a lot of load on the Tor network. Proposed
> solution would be to get all connections for the same torrent
> through the same circuit.
I2P torrent clients (and apps in general) use a single Destination, so
usually only have two or three tunnels built at any one time. This can
be manually increased up to a maximum of 16, although six is usually
sufficient to see a decent speed increase.
Obviously, we recommend that I2P routers that are torrenting
contribute bandwidth back to the network. When Vuze nodes first
appeared their default share ratio was low, and the global network
quality suffered noticeably. After increasing the share ratio, the
network recovered. This is currently not done in Tails because it
defaults to hidden mode; then again, the number of people using Tails
for I2P torrenting would probably be low, compared to the number of
Vuze nodes (which currently are estimated to make up about 30-40% of
the I2P network).
str4d
>
>
> What To Do -----------
>
> - Talk about the protocol (What are the issues with UDP [2], TCP,
> extensions, and so on?)
>
> - Talk about the circuits/load (Can connections be funneled through
> less circuits and/or be less of a burden?)
>
> - Talk about pre/post packaging (Will we include BitTorrent
> software in Tails?)
>
>
> If this sounds good, let's do it :)
>
> Wordlife, Spencer
>
> [0]: https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/index.en.html#index29h2
> [1]: https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/5991 [2]:
> https://www.usenix.org/conference/woot15/workshop-program/presentation
/p2p-file-sharing-hell-exploiting-bittorrent
>
>
>
>
>
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