Freenet - SEARCH #8

Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication. It uses a decentralized distributed data store to store information, and has a suite of free software for working with this data store. Both Freenet and some of its associated tools were originally designed by Ian Clarke, who defines Freenet's goal as providing freedom of speech with strong anonymity protection.
Freenet works by storing small encrypted snippets of content distributed on the computers of its users and connecting only through intermediate computers which pass on requests for content and sending them back without knowing the contents of the full file, similar to how routers on the Internet route packets without knowing anything about files—except with caching, a layer of strong encryption, and without reliance on centralized structures. This allows users to publish anonymously or retrieve various kinds of information. Freenet has been under continuous development since 2000.

Of conclusion, I can say that Freenet is different from most other peer-to-peer applications, both in how users interact with it and in the security it offers. It separates the underlying network structure and protocol from how users interact with the network; as a result, there are a variety of ways to access content on the Freenet network. The simplest is via FProxy, which is integrated with the node software and provides a web interface to content on the network. Using FProxy, a user can browse freesites (websites that use normal HTML and related tools, but whose content is stored within Freenet rather than on a traditional web server). The web interface is also used for most configuration and node management tasks. Through the use of separate applications or plugins loaded into the node software, users can interact with the network in other ways, such as forums similar to web forums or Usenet or interfaces more similar to traditional p2p "filesharing" interfaces.
While Freenet provides an HTTP interface for browsing freesites, it is not a proxy for the World Wide Web; Freenet can only be used to access content that has been previously inserted into the Freenet network. In this way, it is more similar to Tor's hidden services than to anonymous proxy software like Tor's proxy.
Freenet's focus lies on Free speech and anonymity. Because of that, Freenet acts different at certain points that are (direct or indirect) related to the anonymity part. Freenet attempts to protect the anonymity of both people inserting data into the network (uploading) and those retrieving data from the network (downloading). Unlike file sharing systems, there is no need for the uploader to remain on the network after uploading a file or group of files. Instead, during the upload process, the files are broken into chunks and stored on a variety of other computers on the network. When downloading, those chunks are found and reassembled. Every node on the Freenet network contributes storage space to hold files, and bandwidth that it uses to route requests from its peers.


John Goes
IT Manager, IS expert and researcher.