After the Mullvad fiasco I decided to stop using VPNs all together, since port forwarding is always going to be a problem on all of them, if you read the reasons why Mullvad had to shut down that service.
There is a better way using i2p which conceals your IP and makes it impossible for anyone to know what or if you’re downloading at all! No DMCA notices, no problem.
I wrote this small guide to another comment and figured I’d share it in its own post since I’m seeing so many people ask for VPN recommendations.
I use the Java one personally but both would work. Someone posted back on reddit a guide on /r/i2p for qbittorrent, which is what I use now for this too. The guide was shared as a public torrent you can download with this info hash: 3f1d51095f9b116739172c1bced149acf2b10692
Use that hash with any of the various public trackers and you should be able to download that guide.
But if you just want a basic setup, that Java client comes with i2psnark, which is a Bittorrent client already setup.
The only other thing you want to do is go and search the biggest tracker for stuff, which is called PaTracker, Postman’s tracker. http://tracker2.postman.i2p, only accessible from i2p itself, which you’ll need to have setup and running first to view.
This tracker needs more seeders and uploaders in general, and by improving those things service for everyone is better. So the more the merrier.
Thanks! Feel free to ask any questions, there also might be other people who use i2p now for torrenting. I’m sure they’ll help too.
If thats what the poster is calling a “fiasco”, thats a bit much. I was curious what Port forwarding was when that announcement first happened and Mullvad themselves said if you didn’t know what Port forwarding was before their announcement, nothing was changing for you in regards to their services. This is only a fiasco (to my understanding) if you’re someone who file-shares/torrent. Not saying the poster is spreading bad faith or whatever of course.
Lots of people were looking for new VPNs because of it and Mullvad was officially taken off the list of recommended VPNs (on /r/vpntorrenting) because of this change. I always seed a lot because I have unlimited data so this change forced me to stop using Mullvad.
Nope. Disabling port forwarding protects Mullvad from legal liability with respect to illegal content being hosted through their service. Your IP wouldn’t be revealed with or without port forwarding.
I wouldn’t call it a “fiasco”, but they’re disabling port-forwarding for everyone on July 1st. They say it’s because people are hosting “unfavorable” content and it’s getting their IPs banned. Their article
It’s not really a fiasco at all. OP seems to be blowing it way out of proportion. For the vast majority of users it’s not a big deal at all. They are disallowing port forwarding due to how many letters/threats they’ve gotten from their datacenters and law enforcement.
This is very annoying, because it makes it hard for other peers to connect with my server and it will make it harder to seed. This is bad, I will likely switch next year.
I think the only use-case maybe not covered is finding torrents that aren’t uploaded to the I2P tracker yet. They need to be cross-seeded from people who originally uploaded them or from people downloading them from the clearnet to be available.
An example of this is anime. There is significantly less anime available on i2p currently than there are on sites like nyaa.si. People can cross-seed these torrents to make them available on i2p. I do that, for instance. But other than that I can’t think of any other use case that isn’t covered.
I2p is not a substitution for a proxy. I2p is an end-to-end encryption Network and unless it’s changed over the past couple of years it’s incredibly slow for any multimedia transfer. Coupled on top of that you have to have the knowledge to be able to set up your full system to route all traffic through it. So using it as a a security step for most people is already out of the question. It’s not like a VPN where you can just plug and play. Having your entire network communicate through l2p is going to make everything substantially slower.
You can cross-seed with people over clearnet using qBittorrent or BiglyBT, but that also exposes your IP to clearnet people. So you could get DMCA notices if it is copywrited content.
Otherwise typically no you will only be downloading and seeding with people on I2P if you haven’t chosen to cross-seed.
It’s worked well enough for me. Keep in mind this is just for public trackers. Private trackers shouldn’t be used with a VPN anyway and you don’t need to use i2p for them.
Doesn’t this still have the same vulnerability of the potential for a hostile takeover similar to tor? Also, is there any way to use i2p to bypass geoblocking? If not that’s a major reason why I and many people use vpns.
So no, i2p won’t interact with the clearnet at all. So it doesn’t help with access to clearnet sites that are geoblocked. I never used VPNs for geoblocking specifically, just for torrenting, so this wasn’t in my list of use cases.
It makes sense sticking with a VPN if you really need to access a site that is blocked in your country. Or you could use Tor for that, but Tor has its own issues.
Also I’m still not familiar enough with I2P to know if it’s vulnerable to hostile takeover. It IS a completely different protocol from Tor though, so my guess would be it doesn’t have that same issue.
That’s not why port forwarding is important. Port forwarding is needed so that fresh peers can communicate with you and join the swarm. That act has the side-effect of speeding up transfers by allowing more people into the swarm spreading the transfer across more potential seeds/peers
Only one way to find out. Also, the more people participating, the better for everyone. We have the main developer over at the I2P sublem* so feel free to ask there.
Tor relies on exit nodes that are run by volunteers. These exit nodes are limited in both quantity and bandwidth and valuable for activists and others requiring high levels of privacy for the clearnet. I2P does not access the clearnet by default. Instead I2P is peer to peer focused and is setup ideally for torrenting privately. Basicaly Tor would be overloaded if it was used heavily for torrenting. I2P instead gets more robust with eachadditional user.
I have never used i2p but isn’t it pretty slow?
I only have experience with Tor and it’s not recommended to torrent through Tor.
I did listen to the interviews of both Tor and i2p on a Privacy podcast but it was a while back
It’s one of those things that gets faster the longer I2P software is running. As I understand it, it takes time to building link betoween yourself and other members of the network in a safe and secure way, but once they’re built up that extends your reach and speed
So basically the torrent over i2p speed depends on how many torrent users use i2p as weel, as I understand, i2p torrent node will not connect ti a non-i2p node.
I just changed to AirVPN.
Some alternatives I considered: using i2p (but was unaware of the tracker you mentioned) and exploring a fancy VPN called Orchid because it seemed fancy, but gave up on the last two.
I’ll try again i2p to share my Ubuntu ISO.
I’ll admit I2P is harder to setup than a VPN, but I just kept getting frustrated by having to pay and expose data to various VPN services. I can share tips about running I2P in Linux too.
So it looks like setup on ubuntu should be pretty straightforward. Follow these steps to install the java client as a package: https://geti2p.net/en/download/debian
Then under their Post-install work on the bottom of that page follow this:
as a service that automatically runs when your system boots, even before logging in. The service can be enabled with “dpkg-reconfigure i2p” as root or using sudo. This is the recommended means of operation.
That will cause i2p to automatically run at startup. You can use the other methods there if you don’t want that behavior. Lastly, you’ll need to configure a browser to use i2p. https://geti2p.net/en/about/browser-config
Firefox is a good one to use for it but you can use librewolf or another one.
And I think that’s it as far as setup for ubuntu. Let me know if you have more questions : )
Port forwarding, which Mullvad was allowing until recently, allows other people to connect to your bittorrent client that is downloading/seeding torrents. This makes it easier for you to find others who can either help you download, or seed for other users in the network.
Basically it improves download speeds and allows you to easily upload to everyone else.
I see, thanks for clarifying! Even without port-forwarding, I’m able to make some connections. Is there just a more limited set of destination IPs I’m able to connect to? What dictates whether or not I’m able to connect?
Yes! You still get to make outgoing connections to anybody who can accept incoming connections.
Port forwarding makes it so you can accept incoming connections.
Oh also for your last question: Firewalls and NAT. NAT stands for network address translation. NAT is what these services use for getting people to ‘share’ ip addresses in a pool and then map ports to each person/host. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation
Interesting. So when I’m connecting to peers for downloading, these connections can be initiated in both ways? And since I’m not currently port-forwarding, this means I can only actively find peers, rather than passively accepting incoming connections?
I2P is a darknet similar to Tor in some ways, but it is perfectly legal and safe to use depending on what you’re doing on it, of course.
It is used for regular browsing and running services on. People setup hidden services like websites or mail servers or anything on it really. Lemmy could theoretically be hosted over I2P as well, it just wouldn’t federate properly with these ones on the clearnet.
Any other info you would want included? I2P can get pretty in depth but that’s my basic understanding of what I use it for.
I’m hoping DHT and PEX support comes to libtorrent eventually so that qbittorrent can use DHT/PEX with I2P and not just http trackers. I think only i2psnark and a few other clients support it right now. I encourage everyone to cross seed their public torrents to the I2P network and upload to patracker to support the network. Unfortunately, for niche content and private trackers VPNs/seedboxes are a necessity
Interesting stuff, I had heard of i2p before, but mostly in connection with darknet and not yet with torrenting, but it‘s something I might play around with now that I know.
Yeh I had tried torrenting on Tor a LONG time ago but people made it clear to not do that on Tor for one reason or another. But on i2p, the devs made a torrent client directly into the software. It was one of their features and something they want people to use.
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Mullvad fiasco? What did I miss?
Mullvad shut down port forwarding
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/#:~:text=Today we announce that we,removed 2023-07-01.
Can’t say i blame them if it was basically becoming the “clearnet CP site” solution.
Bah! And i have about three quarters of a year paid up with them! Oh well, so long as I can still torrents some I’m sure I’ll be okay
Mullvad disabled port forwarding due to bad people abusing it. It would happen to anyone honestly.
If thats what the poster is calling a “fiasco”, thats a bit much. I was curious what Port forwarding was when that announcement first happened and Mullvad themselves said if you didn’t know what Port forwarding was before their announcement, nothing was changing for you in regards to their services. This is only a fiasco (to my understanding) if you’re someone who file-shares/torrent. Not saying the poster is spreading bad faith or whatever of course.
Lots of people were looking for new VPNs because of it and Mullvad was officially taken off the list of recommended VPNs (on /r/vpntorrenting) because of this change. I always seed a lot because I have unlimited data so this change forced me to stop using Mullvad.
Does this have any serious implications for the average VPN user? Like would any torrenting reveal your IP without port forwarding?
Nope. Disabling port forwarding protects Mullvad from legal liability with respect to illegal content being hosted through their service. Your IP wouldn’t be revealed with or without port forwarding.
Fucking pedos ruined everything.
I’ll read up on this. It’s new for me and thr first time hearing of it, but we should always consider working alternatives
That’s the moment when lemmy became more relavant than reddit to me.
What mullvad fiasco??
I wouldn’t call it a “fiasco”, but they’re disabling port-forwarding for everyone on July 1st. They say it’s because people are hosting “unfavorable” content and it’s getting their IPs banned. Their article
:C
What Mullvad fiasco? I’m still using them :|
Mullvad stopped port forwarding due to being harassed by law enforcement agencies.
What about port forwarding opens Mullvad up to more scrutiny from law enforcement?
Here is Mullvad’s statement on the changes and why, which should hopefully elaborate details pertaining to your question.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense.
Basically dirty fuckers ruining it for everyone else.
Torrenting? I don’t know, I’m not an expert.
In general, torrenting doesn’t require port forwarding.
It’s not really a fiasco at all. OP seems to be blowing it way out of proportion. For the vast majority of users it’s not a big deal at all. They are disallowing port forwarding due to how many letters/threats they’ve gotten from their datacenters and law enforcement.
This is very annoying, because it makes it hard for other peers to connect with my server and it will make it harder to seed. This is bad, I will likely switch next year.
I’m looking up I2P vs VPN and people are saying that I2P cannot replace VPN but I fail to understand why. Can I get some more insight to that?
I think the only use-case maybe not covered is finding torrents that aren’t uploaded to the I2P tracker yet. They need to be cross-seeded from people who originally uploaded them or from people downloading them from the clearnet to be available.
An example of this is anime. There is significantly less anime available on i2p currently than there are on sites like nyaa.si. People can cross-seed these torrents to make them available on i2p. I do that, for instance. But other than that I can’t think of any other use case that isn’t covered.
I2p is not a substitution for a proxy. I2p is an end-to-end encryption Network and unless it’s changed over the past couple of years it’s incredibly slow for any multimedia transfer. Coupled on top of that you have to have the knowledge to be able to set up your full system to route all traffic through it. So using it as a a security step for most people is already out of the question. It’s not like a VPN where you can just plug and play. Having your entire network communicate through l2p is going to make everything substantially slower.
You don’t need to route all traffic, just the traffic from your bittorrent client.
Download speeds have improved significantly as there are more people on there seeding than ever.
i2p is significantly better than a proxy, you jump through multiple hosts/tunnels before reaching the service.
Also it isn’t all network traffic at all, just services connecting through i2p like a web browser you have setup to use it.
Can you only seed to people on i2p?
You can cross-seed with people over clearnet using qBittorrent or BiglyBT, but that also exposes your IP to clearnet people. So you could get DMCA notices if it is copywrited content.
Otherwise typically no you will only be downloading and seeding with people on I2P if you haven’t chosen to cross-seed.
Then this is no replacement for VPN…
Thanks.
It’s worked well enough for me. Keep in mind this is just for public trackers. Private trackers shouldn’t be used with a VPN anyway and you don’t need to use i2p for them.
Why would you not use a VPN with private trackers? VPN all the things!
See this comment for seeding to both clearnet and i2p. I2PSnark (the builtin torrent client) only interacts with I2P, but biglybt can do bridge.
And what do I gain with this over having my torrent client bound to a wireguard interface running through a commercial VPN provider?
Literally nothing.
Doesn’t this still have the same vulnerability of the potential for a hostile takeover similar to tor? Also, is there any way to use i2p to bypass geoblocking? If not that’s a major reason why I and many people use vpns.
yes but the NSA/FBI are not going after you for seeding family guy, they’re there to get the CSAM and drugs
So no, i2p won’t interact with the clearnet at all. So it doesn’t help with access to clearnet sites that are geoblocked. I never used VPNs for geoblocking specifically, just for torrenting, so this wasn’t in my list of use cases.
It makes sense sticking with a VPN if you really need to access a site that is blocked in your country. Or you could use Tor for that, but Tor has its own issues.
Also I’m still not familiar enough with I2P to know if it’s vulnerable to hostile takeover. It IS a completely different protocol from Tor though, so my guess would be it doesn’t have that same issue.
But the multiple jumps make it very slow.
There’s a reason we want port forwarding for near direct connections for torrenting.
That’s not why port forwarding is important. Port forwarding is needed so that fresh peers can communicate with you and join the swarm. That act has the side-effect of speeding up transfers by allowing more people into the swarm spreading the transfer across more potential seeds/peers
Could i2p reasonably even handle this kind of traffic? Torrenting is one of the most network intensive workloads I can think of.
Only one way to find out. Also, the more people participating, the better for everyone. We have the main developer over at the I2P sublem* so feel free to ask there.
*or whatever they’re called
The correct term is Lemming
The official term is “community”, actually.
Why not Tor?
Tor relies on exit nodes that are run by volunteers. These exit nodes are limited in both quantity and bandwidth and valuable for activists and others requiring high levels of privacy for the clearnet. I2P does not access the clearnet by default. Instead I2P is peer to peer focused and is setup ideally for torrenting privately. Basicaly Tor would be overloaded if it was used heavily for torrenting. I2P instead gets more robust with eachadditional user.
I have never used i2p but isn’t it pretty slow? I only have experience with Tor and it’s not recommended to torrent through Tor. I did listen to the interviews of both Tor and i2p on a Privacy podcast but it was a while back
It’s one of those things that gets faster the longer I2P software is running. As I understand it, it takes time to building link betoween yourself and other members of the network in a safe and secure way, but once they’re built up that extends your reach and speed
So basically the torrent over i2p speed depends on how many torrent users use i2p as weel, as I understand, i2p torrent node will not connect ti a non-i2p node.
Am I understanding this correctly?
Basically, yes
I had never heard of it! Thx for the tip
I just changed to AirVPN.
Some alternatives I considered: using i2p (but was unaware of the tracker you mentioned) and exploring a fancy VPN called Orchid because it seemed fancy, but gave up on the last two.
I’ll try again i2p to share my Ubuntu ISO.
I’ll admit I2P is harder to setup than a VPN, but I just kept getting frustrated by having to pay and expose data to various VPN services. I can share tips about running I2P in Linux too.
Please do!
So it looks like setup on ubuntu should be pretty straightforward. Follow these steps to install the java client as a package: https://geti2p.net/en/download/debian
Then under their Post-install work on the bottom of that page follow this:
That will cause i2p to automatically run at startup. You can use the other methods there if you don’t want that behavior. Lastly, you’ll need to configure a browser to use i2p. https://geti2p.net/en/about/browser-config
Firefox is a good one to use for it but you can use librewolf or another one.
And I think that’s it as far as setup for ubuntu. Let me know if you have more questions : )
Huh, I’ve been using a VPN for torrent without setting up any kind of port forwarding! Can someone explain why you might want to do this?
Port forwarding, which Mullvad was allowing until recently, allows other people to connect to your bittorrent client that is downloading/seeding torrents. This makes it easier for you to find others who can either help you download, or seed for other users in the network.
Basically it improves download speeds and allows you to easily upload to everyone else.
I see, thanks for clarifying! Even without port-forwarding, I’m able to make some connections. Is there just a more limited set of destination IPs I’m able to connect to? What dictates whether or not I’m able to connect?
Yes! You still get to make outgoing connections to anybody who can accept incoming connections.
Port forwarding makes it so you can accept incoming connections.
Oh also for your last question: Firewalls and NAT. NAT stands for network address translation. NAT is what these services use for getting people to ‘share’ ip addresses in a pool and then map ports to each person/host. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation
Interesting. So when I’m connecting to peers for downloading, these connections can be initiated in both ways? And since I’m not currently port-forwarding, this means I can only actively find peers, rather than passively accepting incoming connections?
That’s exactly correct!
Cool, I learned something today! Thanks :)
Could you add a block about I2P in general?
There’s an i2p lemmy community, feel free to join us there. i2p
I2P is a darknet similar to Tor in some ways, but it is perfectly legal and safe to use depending on what you’re doing on it, of course.
It is used for regular browsing and running services on. People setup hidden services like websites or mail servers or anything on it really. Lemmy could theoretically be hosted over I2P as well, it just wouldn’t federate properly with these ones on the clearnet.
Any other info you would want included? I2P can get pretty in depth but that’s my basic understanding of what I use it for.
TOR is completely legal and safe to use depending on what you are doing as well. Let’s not demonize the service due to a few bad actors.
I’m hoping DHT and PEX support comes to libtorrent eventually so that qbittorrent can use DHT/PEX with I2P and not just http trackers. I think only i2psnark and a few other clients support it right now. I encourage everyone to cross seed their public torrents to the I2P network and upload to patracker to support the network. Unfortunately, for niche content and private trackers VPNs/seedboxes are a necessity
Interesting stuff, I had heard of i2p before, but mostly in connection with darknet and not yet with torrenting, but it‘s something I might play around with now that I know.
Yeh I had tried torrenting on Tor a LONG time ago but people made it clear to not do that on Tor for one reason or another. But on i2p, the devs made a torrent client directly into the software. It was one of their features and something they want people to use.