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Introduction to Freenet 0.7| Category | | | Summary | | The following article explains Freenet 0.7 and its importance. It further explains what darknets are, and what we can do to help prevent Internet censorship. |
| | Body | Let me start by saying that this article is not intended to be comprehensive, or even 100% accurate, but as an introduction to Freenet. There is a wealth of information provided by the Freenet project which you can utilize to further your understanding. I'll provide some links at the end of the article for those of you who wish to learn more.
For those of you unfamiliar with the Freenet project, it is an ambitious project spearheaded by Ian Clarke aiming to combat, and end, Internet censorship. With hostile regimes limiting citizen access to content on the Internet which they have deemed unsuitable or dangerous, the necessity for a project like Freenet is clear: Big Brother is watching and we shouldn't sit back and take it.
China is a glaring example of Governmental censorship of the Internet, evidence of which lies with their firewall restricting content to all its citizens. The firewall has been dubbed “The Great Firewall of China” by those who oppose it - and its usefulness is not limited to citizens of hostile regimes. Even in a “free” country such as the United States, your activity on the Internet is monitored by your ISP, as well as sites you visit - and information about your activity can be obtained via subpoena. The Freenet project is clearly a benefit to us all.
So, now that we know the problem - what does Freenet do to combat it?
Freenet's approach is to create a network where content can be submitted and retrieved without anyone being able to determine who submitted or retrieved it, and additionally eliminate any possibility of content from being removed (in short: anything submitted to Freenet is permanent). I will get into the details of how Freenet works later on, but for now just view Freenet as a network of interconnected peers where content is split into small chunks and stored throughout the network. This is how Freenet accomplishes its content permanence. In previous versions of Freenet peer connections (ie, the people who you are directly connected to) were unrestricted which led to potential risks to the integrity of the network, as well as the potential to expose individuals on the network.
Freenet 0.7 addresses this by implementing the idea of real-world relationships (Darknets). The theory goes like this: if you connect only to people you know and trust, and they do the same, and so on, eventually everyone is connected. You get the benefit of being able to access data from people you don't know, but the security of only connecting to people you trust. The drawbacks of this are obvious. You have to know people who run Freenet or convince people you know to run it, and secondly this process takes a while to take its course. In its current state, most people on the Freenet 0.7 network are connecting to random people on IRC, which is not ideal however; their connecting to unknown peers does not affect the overall integrity of the network, it only exposes themselves. The key concept to understand here is that you are exposed to those peers you are directly connected to, so trust your peers!
Now that you have some idea of how Freenet works let's delve into some of the specifics. Freenet is a network built on the TCP/IP framework, utilizing TCP and UDP communication. They have implemented UDP “hole punching” to enable communication through firewalls and routers, and although it's not perfect it works fine in most cases. One of the main drawbacks of Freenet 0.5 was that, while it generally was impossible for people to identify you on the network, anyone could tell that you were running a Freenet “node”. This drawback allows ISPs to identify you as a Freenet use and cancel your service as being in violation of their terms of use, or to blanket ban Freenet traffic so it's impossible to run a Freenet node. Freenet 0.7 addresses this by introducing the Darknet concept (the small real-world networks we talked about earlier), whereby the only people who can tell that you are running a Freenet node is people who are directly connected to you (those peers that you trust). This eliminates the possibility of hostile regimes banning users from connecting to the Freenet 0.7 network. This is especially important in the case of governments who have already banned Freenet 0.5 traffic, most notably China.
When you set up a Freenet node you devote a certain amount of disk space to store data Freenet content on your computer. Thus, the capacity of Freenet is directly limited to the sum total of storage space offered by all of the users connected to network at any one time. You may be thinking “well.. if some of the content is stored on my PC couldn't I just delete it and remove it from the network?!”. Nope, the content is split into chunks and encrypted, as well as stored redundantly throughout the network. What this means is that you most likely won't have the complete data, of say an mp3 file on your local store, and even if you did - you wouldn't be able to tell because the data chunks are encrypted.
How is content introduced to the network?
In short, you split your file into chunks, encrypt it and then distribute those chunks through the network, (sending them to the peers you're connected to, and so on and so forth). Additionally you generate a hash of the content (a key) that allows people to know what chunks they need to find to retrieve the data.
How do we retrieve it?
Once we have the key for the data we want, we use it to determine the chunks we need. We then ask our peers if they have those chunks, and if not they ask their peers if they have them, relaying back to you and so on and so forth until all the chunks are found. There is a setting called “Hops to Live” which prevents chunks being searched for indefinitely. The default setting I believe is twenty, which means that the request will go through twenty levels of peers before giving up. Once all the chunks are found they are reassembled and decrypted into their original form.
What kind of content can I expect to find on Freenet?
Anything and everything. Since content is not restricted in any way, and users who are connected to trusted peers need not worry about getting caught, you can find a lot of content which is restricted by laws of some countries. Anything from banned books to bizarre pornography and anything in between. It is completely unrestricted. Naturally some of the content is totally undesirable - so you must be careful whom you trust.
How do I navigate Freenet?
Freenet has a web proxy “FProxy” which allows you to surf Freenet via a web browser (Firefox or Safari is strongly recommended). Just go to http://localhost:8888/ in your web browser and surf away. There are also other services which run under Freenet like Freemail which is an anonymous email system which runs under Freenet, or FROST which is a BBS-style anonymous messaging system designed under Freenet. There are also anonymous BitTorrent trackers, the possibilities are endless.
Which operating system will I need?
Freenet is cross-platform compatible using Java. Any system that can run Java can run Freenet - it's even possible to run it under open source Java JVMs.
Where can I get Freenet?
Visit the Freenet Project.
How do I install and configure Freenet?
Instructions for installation and configuration are here: Freenet 0.7
In closing, I hope that this article has given you a good introduction to Freenet, or a refresher for those of you with previous knowledge. I hope that I have conveyed the importance of this project and its implications, and generally heightened your awareness to the reality of Internet censorship and the possibility of beating it.
This article was originally published by CyberArmy.net in the CyberArmy Library. |
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