User:Martin/Freenet draft

Freenet (software) is a peer-to-peer network that provides a strong protection of anonymity. There is no central management of the network, but data, anonymously inserted into the network by the users, is split into chunks and distributed on multiple other nodes in an encrypted form. Every node on the network contributes storage space and bandwidth for others to store and fetch data.

File Sharing

All content on Freenet is published anonymously. When a user uploads files into the network, they are broken into pieces and stored on multiple other computers in the network. When these files are requested by others, they are located and put together again. Since content is relayed over multiple nodes in the network in an encrypted form, it is much more difficult to determine who inserted the content, who requested it, and where it is stored. Even the user himself does not know what is stored on his/her hard drive in the storage space allocated since the content is encrypted and distributed randomly.

Modes

There are two possible ways to configure Freenet:

• Opennet

user automatically connects to strangers

• Darknet

user only connects to friends after mutual exchange of reference keys

Use

Users do not use Freenet to access regular websites on the World Wide Web, but to access so-called "freesites" which others inserted into the network.

Performance

Since content in Freenet is distributed randomly and first needs to be located on request, accessing it is necessarily slower than accessing content on the Web. The documentation claims that performance improves over time <ref>[1]</ref> (possibly due to caching ???).

References

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External Links

Freenet at Wikipedia Quite comprehensive Wikipedia entry

Freenet Project Official website of the project with download