[tor-talk] UDP-based Tor-like test network for Bittorrent

[Johan Pouwelse <peer2peer@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,
We have implemented parts of the Tor protocol in Python, it uses UDP and
integrated it with a decentralised gossip-based directory service.

Today we're launching a public trial for testing and feedback. We hope
this could be an alternative for avid torrent users and move some of
the file sharing load (50%) away from Tor. This trial in no way
connects to the Tor network.

Feature under test:
router are behind NAT and use UDP puncturing to create 3-hop tunnels

This is very much work in progress and under active development. We
tried to follow the Tor message specifications as best as we could and
use UDP exclusively. Our todo list is still long, for instance, DTLS
is not yet used. Help welcome..

All participants in our trial automatically become guard/relay and
exit node for a single Bittorrent test swarm. Congestion control is
end-to-end, done by LEDBAT within Libtorrent. The trial network does
not use directory authorities. Every client includes a list of
hard-coded IP addresses to bootstrap. Every participant contacts them
and then builds up their own view of online routers using gossip
messages. This makes this network vulnerable to a wide range of
attacks, especially the Sybil attack. Our full decentralisation
clearly weakens security. Our motivation is to empirically validate
one possible design alternative, one fully focused on decentralisation
and scalability.

details: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Anonymous-Downloading-and-Streaming-specifications
code: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/blob/v6.3.0/Tribler/community/tunnel/community.py#L271
press: http://torrentfreak.com/tribler-makes-bittorrent-client-anonymous-built-tor-network-140902/
about us: http://tribler.org/about.html

Greetings, Johan Pouwelse, Delft University of Technology
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