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Could anyone provide a reasonable explanation of how I2P (garlic routing) works, why is it is well suited for Monero (compared to possible alternatives)?

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  • Good question, I wanted to know that myself. – user141 Oct 21 '16 at 21:20
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As compared to Tor which is the most popular now:

  • i2pd serves the same efforts as Tor, but on a more p2p level, rather than relying on servers.
  • i2p lends itself more towards our workload.
  • Monero i2p nodes will also act as general i2p routers, which increases the size of the i2p mixnet and thus has an upshot for both.
  • Tor is optimised for low-bandwidth clients and high-bandwidth exit nodes, whereas i2p is optimised for internal hidden services. Thus, i2p is significantly faster when routing internal traffic.
  • i2p's floodfill routers (roughly analogous to Tor's directory servers) aren't hardcoded
  • i2p is a packet-switched network (as opposed to circuit-switched) which makes it more robust
  • no client-only peers, all peers route traffic and assist in building and running short-lived tunnels
  • TCP and UDP are supported, which means that things like OpenAlias can still work over i2p
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    For those who like references, this is the source: forum.getmonero.org/1/news-announcements-and-editorials/208/… – user36303 Oct 22 '16 at 12:42
  • I would put a link but I was penalized for putting a link in another post. For some bizarre reason they prefer you copy paste than put a link here in SE. As far as I'm concerned, that just encourages laziness in the questions, and I think its silly. – pl55 Oct 22 '16 at 13:57
  • A link alone is subject to break, and the post will be pointless soon enough. I'd copy the relevant part, and add a link both. – user36303 Oct 22 '16 at 14:27
  • Could you explain what packet-switched and circuit-switched networks are, and expand on their differences? – user141 Oct 22 '16 at 15:49
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    packet switched: different packets in a connection might take different paths through the network; circuit switched: all packets in a connection will follow the same route (until the circuit is rebuilt). The former makes traffic analysis harder. – user36303 Oct 22 '16 at 18:25

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