Hi Everyone... this is really grave news for us... who tap into the internet stream of linux distros and shared software...Is it not ironic that bittorrent being designed to ease the load of traffic from downloading from a single source that now It seems that there are reports from all over the world about ISPs throttling Bittorrent traffic... If you monitor such traffic from graphs you will notice a spikey pattern... Your bittorrent will run fine then suddenly drop and will spike up at intervals.... Classic throttling from ISP... Well my friends.. the internet being the beautiful creature it is.. has already started evolving... There are couple of ways around this..... Readon.....

The answer to all this censorship and throttling from ISPs is to use anonymizing P2Ps. Although many of these projects are quite new. Some of them are starting to mature... like for instance the ants p2p, I heard about it about a year ago. It is still around and starting to draw attention of users. Lets look at some of these potential anonymizing p2ps.  

Quoting Mike Godwin.....

"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'"
--Mike Godwin, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Here are is a list of Anonymous P2P that are starting to get popular:

Ants http://antsp2p.sourceforge.net/

ANts P2P realizes a third generation P2P net. It protects your privacy while you are connected and makes you not trackable, hiding your identity (ip) and crypting everything you are sending/receiving from others.

Freenet http://freenetproject.org/

Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.

Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are "routed-through" other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is. Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Unlike other peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Freenet does not let the user control what is stored

in the data store. Instead, files are kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files in the data store are encrypted to reduce the likelihood of prosecution by persons wishing to censor Freenet content.

GNUnet http://gnunet.org/

GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking that does not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services. A first service implemented on top of the networking layer allows anonymous censorship-resistant file-sharing. GNUnet uses a simple, excess-based economic model to allocate resources. Peers in GNUnet monitor each others behavior with respect to resource usage; peers that contribute to the network are rewarded with better service.

I2P http://www.i2p.net/

I2P is an anonymizing network, offering a simple layer that identity-sensitive applications can use to securely communicate. All data is wrapped with several layers of encryption, and the network is both distributed and dynamic, with no trusted parties.Anonymity is not a boolean - we are not trying to make something "perfectly anonymous", but instead are working at making attacks more and more expensive to mount. I2P alone is what could be called a "low latency mix network", and there are limits to the anonymity offered by such a system, but the applications on top of I2P, such as Syndie, I2P mail, and I2PSnark extend it to offer both additional functionality and protection. I2P is still a work in progress, and should only be used for testing or development purposes prior to the 1.0 release. Further releases beyond that will add support for more hostile adversaries.

MUTE http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/

MUTE protects your privacy by avoiding direct connections with your sharing partners in the network. Most other file sharing programs use direct connections to download or upload, making your identity available to spies from the RIAA and other unscrupulous organizations. Ants display collectively intelligent behavior when foraging for food or fighting off predators. Each ant in the colony acts in a rather simple way, but together they end up doing something clever, like discovering the shortest path between their ant hill and a food source. MUTE's routing mechanism is inspired by ant behavior.

MUTE is based on research, and experiments show that it works quite well. MUTE's ant-inspired routing is light-weight, robust, and adaptive. Results from experiments in real MUTE networks show that the collective behavior of MUTE nodes quickly finds the shortest (or fastest) routing path between two nodes on the network.

RShare http://rshare.de/

Compared with server-based filesharing systems like eDonkey2000 there are no central or dedicated servers within the RShare network so correlation of IP addresses to files is nearly impossible. Conventional serverless filesharing networks maintain direct connections between participating clients (FastTrack/Kazaa, Kademlia, Gnutella or BitTorrent). In contrast RShare clients use never direct connections, the network traffic is rather routed trough several other RShare nodes/clients. IP addresses of senders and recipients in the RShare network are hidden. Instead of IP addresses so-called RShare IDs are used which can´t be correlated with IP addresses. In addition all data routed between RShare nodes is encrypted so even ISPs can´t analyze transmitted data to check if you are doing some kind of filesharing Compared with server-based filesharing systems like eDonkey2000 there are no central or dedicated servers within the RShare network so correlation of IP addresses to files is nearly impossible. Conventional serverless filesharing networks maintain direct connections between participating clients (FastTrack/Kazaa, Kademlia, Gnutella or BitTorrent). In contrast RShare clients use never direct connections, the network traffic is rather routed trough several other RShare nodes/clients. IP addresses of senders and recipients in the RShare network are hidden. Instead of IP addresses so-called RShare IDs are used which can´t be correlated with IP addresses. In addition all data routed between RShare nodes is encrypted so even ISPs can´t analyze transmitted data to check if you are doing some kind of filesharing

Conclusions

These are some descriptions from wikipedia and the actual sites. As I mentioned the internet is vary much a living organism. And all of us make up the internet. As such it will adapt accordingly to survive. Ok so much about philosopy... I think the next biggest question is which one of these projects will become mainstream. Which one will be the new Bittorrent... Well try it out and see which one you prefer. Let me know what you think....

Comments (1)

	1. 03-04-2007 22:03
	Just a thought... Maybe using a proxy server with BitTorrent might keep the ISPs nose out... Traffic won't go trough the ISP, and they have no power over the downloads/uploads.     Cons:   1. Fast free proxies are hard to find.    2. The Middle East has a powerful internet filtering network and ISPs have managed to block certain internet availabilities (pages, IM applications, downloads) even if the users are connected to proxies. So, the ISP might be able to block you even if you're using a proxy.    3. Each proxy keeps records (in most countries is required by law) of the activity passing trough them, so it might not be as anonymous. Registered Report

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