i2pd Anonymous Network

Introduction¶

I2P is an anonymous overlay network and competitor to the more-popular Tor network with a focus on hidden websites called eepsites. i2pd (I2P Daemon) is a lightweight C++ implementation of the I2P protocol.

Prerequisites and assumptions¶

The following are minimum requirements for using this procedure:

A public IPv4 or IPv6 address, whether directly on the server, with port forwarding, or UPnP/NAT-PMP

Installing `i2pd`¶

To install i2pd, you need to first install the EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) and i2pd copr (Cool Other Package Repo) repositories:

curl -s https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/supervillain/i2pd/repo/epel-10/supervillain-i2pd-epel-10.repo -o /etc/yum.repos.d/i2pd-epel-10.repo
dnf install -y epel-release

Then install i2pd:

dnf install -y i2pd

Configuring `i2pd` (optional)¶

With the packages installed, you can configure i2pd if required. The author uses vim for this, but if you prefer nano or something else, go ahead and substitute that in:

vim /etc/i2pd/i2pd.conf

The default i2pd.conf file is pretty descriptive, but can get long if you just want a basic configuration, you can leave as-is.

However, if you want to enable IPv6 and UPnP and set the listen HTTP proxy port to 12345, a configuration allowing this follows:

ipv6 = true
[httpproxy]
port = 12345
[upnp]
enabled = true

If you want to set other options, the configuration file is self-explanatory on all the possible options.

Enabling `i2pd`¶

We can now enable i2pd

systemctl enable --now i2pd

Visiting I2P eepsites¶

This example, uses Firefox on Rocky Linux. If you are not using Firefox, see the documentation of your application to set an HTTP proxy.

Open up Firefox, click the hamburger menu icon, and then go to Settings:

Firefox menu dropdown

Scroll to the Network Settings and subsequently press *Settings

Firefox Network Settings section

Then select Manual proxy connection, enter in localhost and 4444 (or the port you selected), check Also use this proxy for HTTPS and select OK.

Firefox Connection Settings dialog

Now, you are able to browse I2P eepsites. As an example, navigate to http://planet.i2p (Note: the http:// is important to prevent Firefox from defaulting to a search engine):

Firefox viewing planet.i2p

Conclusion¶

With so many internet users concerned about online privacy, I2P is one way to access hidden websites securely. i2pd is lightweight software that makes browsing I2P websites possible, alongside sharing your connection as an relay.

Author: Neel Chauhan

Contributors: Steven Spencer