It is experimental indeed. While it "works", it is no where near the reliability and efficiency of other I2P torrent clients like I2Psnark or BiglyBT, both of which are Java based.
That is the lacking area. There needs to be a development in the area of DHT crawlers and indexers to help find torrents on I2P like how btdigg works, but for I2P torrents. Hopefully one day.
The I2P network thanks you.
Yes, I did exactly this when I2P support was first in beta. I have a docker stack with Gluetun as my network for all my *arr containers and I was able to still point my qBittorrent to my i2pd router and it worked just fine.
Yes, absolutely. I have a VPS that runs a i2pd router and I can set my clients to point to my VPS and I am able to use the I2P network. In doing so, I had to make sure I forwarded the correct ports on my VPS so that it would reach the i2pd application. I will do a write up soon.
Guide for Linux: https://strict3443.codeberg.page/i2p-info/hugo/public/posts/how-to-use-i2p-on-qbittorrent-nox/
You can install i2pd with sudo apt install i2pd and then point your services towards your i2p router (Ex. 127.0.0.1) and you are good to go.
You can cross-seed torrents by adding I2P trackers to the tracker list. What helps is when you upload the .torrent file to tracker2.postman.i2p (the only? i2p public torrent tracker) so that others can find the magnet/torrent link and start downloading. That way people can find the InfoHash and also have trackers embedded in the i2p .torrent file to allow you to find seeders.
Some info on this subject: https://old.reddit.com/r/i2p/comments/xfqvap/how_to_correctly_cross_seed_to_make_clearnet/
What I mean is if I create a new torrent of Big Buck Bunny with a InfoHash of b1946ac92492d2347c6235b4d2611184 for example, no one will find my torrent by searching for "Big Buck Bunny". Unless I post this hash somewhere, advertising "Hey, this torrent is Big Buck Bunny" like what 1337x and other torrent sites do, you won't "find" it. Basically, we have to use a torrent indexer like tracker2.postman.i2p to search the metadata and find torrents we want. If that makes sense.
https://geti2p.net/en/download for the java version, which comes with extra apps. Otherwise, you can go to https://i2pd.website/ for the C++ version which is much lighter and you can just point your browser/torrent clients at the i2p router and you are good to go.
From my experience, some popular I2P torrents have gotten up to 1 MB/s download, but I usually average around 200 KB/s. While it is not blazing fast, it does provide a good deal of anonymity for everyone involved with the torrent.
Also, you can lower the anonymity and increase speeds by reducing the number of hops from 3 to 2 or 1. You can choose how "anonymous" you'd like to be while torrenting, at the cost of speed.
The most known outproxy: https://stormycloud.org/i2p-outproxy/
https://geti2p.net/en/docs/how/threat-model#sybil
Good write-up from the I2P team on this topic. Page includes other attack vectors as well.
You can try using BiglyBT on android following these instructions: https://github.com/BiglySoftware/BiglyBT/wiki/I2P#user-content-biglybt-i2p-and-android
Otherwise, I'd suggest using a desktop to run i2psnark, BiglyBT, or qBittorrent and use i2pd along with those clients.
It would be nice to have qBittorrent auto add I2P trackers to all torrents to help cross-seed them.
This is a good point. I also feel like private trackers are meant for people who actually seed content they download, and just have good intentions to help share content. This also comes with hardware requirements (disk space) sometimes that not everyone has.
Glad to see that working still! Torrenting over I2P is sort of a fail-safe option for people in somewhat oppressive places where VPNs may be illegal. Also, with the recent port-forwarding removal in Mullvad, this makes it harder moving forward to try and seed content without being able to make a direct connection with open ports.
Here is an ansible role you can use to deploy i2pd to linux servers and such: https://codeberg.org/systemfailure.net/ansible_i2pd. Otherwise, on most distros the i2pd package should be able to be installed from the package managers in the terminal.
You can use one i2pd router for many clients/services, as long as your device can handle it.
I'll check out MuWire, was unaware that it used DHT.
Also, I am just saying that tracker2.postman.i2p is the only torrent directory we have currently, and its best way to find and advertise torrents for others. Trackers (where your client announces to) are helpful to finding peers of the same torrent.
What @supervent@lemmy.dbzer0.com said. Basically you get access to the I2P network (overlay on top of the regular internet) that provides anonymity and doesn't require any port forwarding. Thus, this allows every user to seed torrents without worrying about opening ports or getting letters in the mail.
The torrent space on I2P is still growing, there are some chads cross-seeding to the I2P network allowing for torrenting popular torrents over I2P.