Discovering I2P torrents using BiglyBT

How do you use BiglyBT to discover I2P torrents from different trackers? I tend to just go to postman.i2p and discover torrents there, but I want a way to discover torrents using BiglyBT and I2P. I know that BiglyBT has DHT capabilities, does that work over the I2P network to discover torrents (Perhaps through Swarm Discovery?)

Any seasoned captains out there?

18 comments

Today I learned about the i2p project! Looking forward to trying this out. Sadly I have nothing to share to help answer, but thank you for raising your question

40
- Welcome! I2p is a pretty cool project and it has way more uses than for torrenting, but i was drawn to it for that purpose when I started out.
  
  https://geti2p.net/en/about/intro
  
  29
- I recommend using i2pd, a more performant and stable version, rewritten in C++, instead of the normal I2P client, which is written in Java and can sometimes have performance issues.
  
  4
According to the docs there's some kind of search functionality built into it: https://github.com/BiglySoftware/BiglyBT/wiki/MetaSearch

Off-topic: I haven't tried i2p in years and have never used BiglyBT. Out of curiosity, what download speeds are you seeing?

11
- Depending on the number and kind of seeders I would say that I can download a "normal" movie (2-3 GB) in arround 4-12 hours (sorry that i dont have some real numbers, I could check again later for that). So you probably won't be able to say "hey, i just saw this new i2p-torrent, lets quickly download it" but its defenitly usable, especially when building a library. The "worst" torrent I downloaded was like 50 GB of House M.D. that was seeded by just a single person, but after roughly 1,5 -2 Weeks it was done!
  
  15
  
  Hmm, so looks like around 100kB/s. That's about what I remember (100kB/s - 300kB/s).
  
  I've recently been trying out Tribler, and it's much faster than the last time I tried it (I've seen 2MB/s on popular torrents, but around 500kB/s on less popular). Not sure if there are simply more exit nodes with more bandwidth now or if there are more people on the Tribler network seeding.
  
  5
is i2p even worth it anymore? I checked a while back and it seemed pretty dead. not too many people at all

4
- What's with "anymore"? It's still actively developed, there are regular releases of both the original Java I2P router and the 3rd party C++ router, if you mean that.
  
  If you mean that it lacks content, please do upload there if you have something. If you already have the content on disk, it should only really take effort while you're just starting to create torrents.
  
  Don't forget that
  
  I2P is the only semi-popular mixnet that's suitable for torrents
  
  nobody will know it's you who are uploading, so unless you upload info about yourself or you're living in an extremely nonfree country (in which case the Java based router will set itself to restricted mode), you can't really get into trouble for that
  
  16
  
  I mean piracy activity wise, it seems fairly head. maybe im just remembering differently since pirating was a bit less popular, but it feels like it was more healthy in the past.
  
  3
- It’s still very active. Postman.i2p has new content every day
  
  3
Shouldn't it technically be possible to set this up with bitmagnet? Does anyone have experience with that?

2
I've tried it. I like the idea of Tor for torrents, you don't need a VPN to torrent. But found the speeds to be really bad and the content was a fraction of the clearnet trackers. Might check it out again though it's been a while.

2
- I like the idea of Tor for torrents
  
  Stop that! https://blog.torproject.org/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea/
  
  6
I don't use biglybt because I don't have that much RAM. That is, I do have, but fucking windows is fucking aggressive with swapping for some fucking reason.

0
- i2Psnark is an alternative. With a lot less features (and not mentioning the UX)
  
  4

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