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Freenet 0.5.1 Released, P2P Network Stabilizing

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the gonna-get-scary dept.

mids writes "With version 0.5.1, Freenet isn't only the most secure & anonymous P2P network, but also getting pretty fast! Reliable downloading of files as large as 700MB from Freenet at average download rates as high as 100k/sec on a broadband internet connection are sighted (which compares quite favorably to more conventional P2P applications)."

1 of 629 comments (clear)

  1. Unlike other people, I tried this.... by anonymous+cupboard · · Score: 5, Informative
    In a most unslashdot way, I actually d/led and tried it out before the article was posted here. Freenet is not the same as the other P2P programs, Freenet is about distributed anonymous storage with the ability to store different kinds of data with encrypted and anonymous access.

    What it is about is the ability to store anything, particularly items that may give the holder problems, like the film of a cop selling drugs to kids.

    It isn't eDonkey, it isnt Kazzaa. With both of these systems you know what you are sharing, with Freenet you don't. With traditional P2P, MPAA can go round logging who is sharing LOTR and send them DMCA cease and desist notices. If you are living in Farkistan, you can publish your videos of police executions without fear that the police can track you down. Once you have loaded a file on the net with freenet, you don't know where it is, and neither does anyone else until they are given a hash key.

    You just have some file storage assigned to the network which is browsable by a hash key through your local web browser. Freenet appears as localhost:8888 to your browser so you can access with a locked-down Mozilla or even IE (less wise because of the holes). People can know that you are running Freenet, but that is all (assuming you clear browser caches and so on).

    The downside is because you can share anything anonymously, people do. However, unless someone is prepared to publish a reference to young Britney and her dog, nobody is going to find it.

    The curious thing is that if you have a fairly static IP and are contributing space to the net, you have no idea what is stored on your machine. It could be human rights info, it could be copyright material, it could be very illegal pornography. You just don't know.

    Also it seems to take a long time to get into the network. It is painfully slow to start and until it starts caching information locally, a letter may be faster.