Freenet, An Anonymous P2P Network

Freenet is exactly what it claims to be. It's anonymous to a level that would be very difficult to crack without a level of computing that wont even really be remotely feasable for several hundred years (if ever). Granted, there are some statistical forms of attack, but as I understant it, applying them involves creating a LOT of nodes and snooping ALL of the traffic to and from ALL of the nodes under your control. Something that I rather doubt even the NSA or an evil multi-national corporation is up to doing.

So, with all that, as long as a user practices a certain amount of sensible precautions, Freenet can be considered easily anonymous enough for almost anyone's needs. There is, of course, a price paid for that anonymity. Freenet is nowhere near as fast as Bittorrent and other traditional P2P networks. Being anonymous involves strong encryption in a lot of places, and this takes time to process.

Ok, given that you want to be anonymous, and also given that you at least are able and willing to read some documentation and a readme file or six, you're ready to get freenet.

Which version to get? That's right, there are currently two versions of freenet. The latest version is called 0.7, and is currently in the alpha stage of development. It is a 'darknet' design which means that you must manually do some of the work aquireing and tending the connections to other nodes. I've run it, and it does work, but as I said, it does require more attention on a regular basis.

The other version of freenet is 0.5, it's stable and has quite a bit more content. Because of the anonymous nature of it, it's not possible to know exactly how many nodes there are, but as of this writing an estimated 2000 or more nodes compared to roughly 900 or so for 0.7. With anonymity networks, the more nodes you have, the stronger the anonymity and 'plausible deniability' of the system. Another thing is that the more nodes there are, the more content the network is capable of holding. Most users on 0.5 dedicate 5 to 10 gigabytes of space on their HD to freenet's data store, some give freenet as much as 30 gigs or more.

To get freenet 0.5, you can get it from http://peculiarplace.com/freenet, where I have set up an unofficial freenet alternative download site. On my alternative download page, I also provide a brief guide to getting freenet started.