I2P clients
Last edited 2023-05-14
Thanks to notbob for the suggested edits. You can email them at notbob@i2pmail.org or notbob@mail.i2p (within I2P network) for any questions you may have. Other contact methods are listed on their eepsite.
If you do not know what I2P is, read the wiki. There may be other clients but the three that matter most is I2P with java, I2P+ with java and I2PD with C++.
I2P looks friendly but in practice, it mostly isn’t. It has a nice looking UI and a few links on the router homepage to start navigating the network but when you are trying to configure it to do what you want, things are not always easy to find and for some reason on my laptop, some changes don’t save after a restart of the software which is very frustrating. I’ve tried to fix this but no luck. On one of my computers, I2P would just keep crashing and I have no explanation for this. I tried using different versions on that machine, switching the drives it runs from but still does this.
I2P+ is a modified version of the main I2P java client. It usually performs better than I2P. During times of attack on the I2P network, I2P+ has proven to be valuable usually working better than I2PD and I2P clients. You can test it out and compare performance.
I2PD has better documentation in my eyes. Everything feels easy to find and configure because of this unlike I2P which is mostly confusing even if you have used it for some time. Their documentation feels harder to use. I2PD written in C++ means it is much less stress on hardware unlike I2P which always feels like it’s killing my CPU. It also just felt a lot easier to setup hidden services for I2P network on I2PD than with I2P client. I2PD doesn’t come with a BitTorrent client unlike I2P with i2psnark but it isn’t difficult to set one up with I2PD.
I2PD is developed by mostly russians which is fitting since they love torrenting and I2P is one giant anonymous P2P network. Thanks to the developers of this great software.