Tor (short for The Onion Router) is a system intended to enable online anonymity.[11]
Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide
volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or
usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis.
Using Tor makes it more difficult to trace Internet activity, including
"visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages and other
communication forms", back to the user.[11]
It is intended to protect users' personal freedom, privacy, and ability
to conduct confidential business by keeping their internet activities
from being monitored.
"Onion routing" refers to the layered nature of the encryption service: The original data are encrypted and re-encrypted multiple times, then sent through successive Tor relays, each one of which decrypts a "layer" of encryption before passing the data on to the next relay and ultimately the destination. This reduces the possibility of the original data being unscrambled or understood in transit.[12]
The Tor client is free software, and there are no additional charges to use the network.
The I2P anonymous network ('I2P') is a proxy network aiming at online anonymity. It implements garlic routing, which is an enhancement of Tor's onion routing.
I2P is fully distributed and works by encrypting all communications in
various layers and relaying them through a network of routers run by
volunteers in various locations. By keeping the source of the
information hidden, I2P offers censorship resistance. The goals of I2P
are to protect users' personal freedom, privacy, and ability to conduct
confidential business.
Each user of I2P runs an I2P router on their computer (node). The I2P router takes care of finding other peers and building anonymizing tunnels through them. I2P provides proxies for all protocols (HTTP, irc, SOCKS, ...).
The software is free and open-source, and the network is free of charge to use.
Most of the time 'proxy' refers to a layer-7 application on the OSI
reference model. However, another way of proxying is through layer-3 and
is known as Network Address Translation (NAT). The difference between
these two technologies is the tier in which they operate, and the way of
configuring the clients to use them as a proxy.
In client configuration of NAT, configuring the gateway is sufficient. However, for client configuration of a layer-7 proxy, the destination of the packets that the client generates must always be the proxy server (layer-7), then the proxy server reads each packet and finds out the true destination.
Because NAT operates at layer-3, it is less resource-intensive than the layer-7 proxy, but also less flexible. As we compare these two technologies, we might encounter a terminology known as 'transparent firewall'. Transparent firewall means that the layer-3 proxy uses the layer-7 proxy advantages without the knowledge of the client. The client presumes that the gateway is a NAT in layer-3, and it does not have any idea about the inside of the packet, but through this method the layer-3 packets are sent to the layer-7 proxy for investigation.
"Onion routing" refers to the layered nature of the encryption service: The original data are encrypted and re-encrypted multiple times, then sent through successive Tor relays, each one of which decrypts a "layer" of encryption before passing the data on to the next relay and ultimately the destination. This reduces the possibility of the original data being unscrambled or understood in transit.[12]
The Tor client is free software, and there are no additional charges to use the network.
I2P anonymous proxy
Each user of I2P runs an I2P router on their computer (node). The I2P router takes care of finding other peers and building anonymizing tunnels through them. I2P provides proxies for all protocols (HTTP, irc, SOCKS, ...).
The software is free and open-source, and the network is free of charge to use.
Proxy vs. NAT
In client configuration of NAT, configuring the gateway is sufficient. However, for client configuration of a layer-7 proxy, the destination of the packets that the client generates must always be the proxy server (layer-7), then the proxy server reads each packet and finds out the true destination.
Because NAT operates at layer-3, it is less resource-intensive than the layer-7 proxy, but also less flexible. As we compare these two technologies, we might encounter a terminology known as 'transparent firewall'. Transparent firewall means that the layer-3 proxy uses the layer-7 proxy advantages without the knowledge of the client. The client presumes that the gateway is a NAT in layer-3, and it does not have any idea about the inside of the packet, but through this method the layer-3 packets are sent to the layer-7 proxy for investigation.
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