GNUnet

Introduction

GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking. The primary application implemented within the GNUnet framework is anonymous censorship-resistant file-sharing.

The goal of the GNUnet project is to provide an infrastructure for secure peer-to-peer networking. All communication in GNUnet is authenticated and link-to-link encrypted. The economic model makes attacks on the network harder since the economics can be used to control resource usage. GNUnet peers exchange messages using a pluggable transport service abstraction. Currently, transport services based on UDP, TCP, HTTP and SMTP are available. The GNUnet core provides mechanisms to perform resource allocations for CPU, bandwidth and storage space. The core enforces resource limitations set by the user. GNUnet does not rely on any centralized services. New Peer-to-Peer protocols can be easily implemented on top of the basic GNUnet infrastructure. Current protocols include anonymous file sharing, a trivial chat protocol, message throughput benchmarking and network topology visualization.
While our goals are similar to projects like Freenet, Gnutella, Mnet, and others, we hope to provide a superior combination of features for users that value security more than efficiency.

A list of frequently asked questions is available. A couple of papers may give some further insight. Extensive documentation can be found on ovmj.org.

Downloading GNUnet

GNUnet can be found on ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnunet/, the GNU mirrors or on ovmj.org.

Requirements

GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD or Solaris.
gtk+ (>= 1.2)
libextractor (>= 0.2.5)

Please keep in mind that this is a beta version. There may still be some stability, scalability and performance issues.
So far the network is very small. Very little content is yet available. A subscription to GNUnet mailinglists might be a good idea.

Return to GNU's home page.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to [email protected]. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to [email protected], send other questions to [email protected].

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: $Date: 2003/09/29 04:45:50 $ $Author: grothoff $