# I Tried I2P

It feels like Tor in the early 2010s when [1 BTC] = [1 pack of mar
ijuana]. It is really slow but also very clean compared to Tor. It
also feels like Gopher on the darknet. Well, not many sites are th
ere except some Chinese and Russian forums. And it is not full of
childporn unlike Freenet. I think I2P is more for file sharing, co
mmunication and P2P stuff.




So these are what I felt about it:


There were some problems to use.

0. Slow. But I already expected it so not a real problem.

1. Tunnels close too frequently. It means that I can't connect to
the internet too frequently. I should restart the daemon and there
is a prep time (>10s) for the daemon to restart.

2. Theoretically, you can use it for itself, but I think you shoul
d depend on Tor anyway at this state.

3. There are not many sites. It also means that there are not many
frontend (like Invidious) I2P instances unlike Tor. But at least n
atter.i2p is a really good Nitter frontend.

4. The default setting sucks. You should change at least the defau
lt outproxy server from false.i2p into outproxy.acetone.i2p to use
it properly. false.i2p is too slow and buggy. Also set X mode for
bandwidth. And set the tunnel lengths 2 and the tunnel quantity 16
.


But there were some good things too.

1. You can do anonymous torrenting. And tracker2.postman.i2p is th
e best torrent tracker I have ever found on the darknet.

2. The network is more decentralized and P2P driven than Tor.

3. Compared to Tor, it is quite FBI-free.

4. You can avoid Rust. Read [this][0] for the issue.




So will I use it regularly? Yes. I'm going to migrate to I2P from
Tor gradually. In these years, Tor has been sucking so much. My ma
in proxy port is 4444 now, not 9050 anymore.

If you want to try I2P, start with [I2P Wiki][1]. That is a really
good guide for beginners. Also, use I2Pd instead of the official I
2P software. The official one uses Java. I2Pd uses C++. C++ sucks
but Java sucks much more.


[0]: https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:philosophy:rust_trademark
[1]: http://wiki.i2p-projekt.i2p/wiki/index.php/Main_Page