Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: The Invisible Internet Project (I2P) is a peer-to-peer overlay network that assumes complete abstraction of the Internet's spatial distribution. I2P's freedom from spatial restrictions is a prerequisite to all the anonymity guarantees it offers. All I2P literature has implicitly considered this assumption to be true, but if it turned otherwise, I2P's anonymity guarantees will be significantly degraded, and much of the previous literature must be reconsidered. In this paper, we test this assumption and demonstrate that a router's view of the I2P network depends on its geographic location. Using measurements collected from multiple geographic locations, we demonstrate that a router's view of the network is not uniform but instead strongly shaped by location. Statistical tests (Chi-square and Kolmogorov-Smirnov) confirm that peer distributions differ significantly across locations, challenging the assumption of spatial independence. Furthermore, latency analysis reveals that routers in regions with weaker infrastructure may experience higher delays, introducing measurable performance disparities. In other words, our observation suggest that this assumption is false.
Institutions: University of Cincinnati, Université de Bordeaux
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4414200465