An Empirical Study of the I2P Anonymity Network and its Censorship Resistance
Nguyen Phong Hoang, Panagiotis Kintis, Manos Antonakakis, and Michalis, Polychronakis

TL;DR
This paper empirically analyzes the I2P anonymity network, revealing its size, structure, and vulnerability to censorship, and discusses potential improvements for resistance against blocking techniques.
Contribution
It provides the first detailed empirical measurement of I2P's network properties and demonstrates its susceptibility to address-based censorship.
Findings
Approximately 32,000 active I2P peers daily.
A censor can block over 95% of peers with only 10 routers.
Blocking more than 70% of peers significantly impairs network usability.
Abstract
Tor and I2P are well-known anonymity networks used by many individuals to protect their online privacy and anonymity. Tor's centralized directory services facilitate the understanding of the Tor network, as well as the measurement and visualization of its structure through the Tor Metrics project. In contrast, I2P does not rely on centralized directory servers, and thus obtaining a complete view of the network is challenging. In this work, we conduct an empirical study of the I2P network, in which we measure properties including population, churn rate, router type, and the geographic distribution of I2P peers. We find that there are currently around 32K active I2P peers in the network on a daily basis. Of these peers, 14K are located behind NAT or firewalls. Using the collected network data, we examine the blocking resistance of I2P against a censor that wants to prevent access to I2P…
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