What is Freenet?
The freenet site describes it best:
Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack.
Communications by Freenet nodes are encrypted and are "routed-through" other nodes to make it extremely difficult to determine who is requesting the information and what its content is.
Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Unlike other peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Freenet does not let the user control what is stored in the data store. Instead, files are kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files in the data store are encrypted to reduce the likelihood of prosecution by persons wishing to censor Freenet content.
Click here to read the rest
To install freenet, download one of these archives:
freenet05_build_5107.zip
freenet05_build_5107_painkiller.zip
freenet05_build_5108.zip
freenet05_build_5108_painkiller.zip
freenet05_build_5109.zip
Each archive contains everything needed for windows and linux installs. The "painkiller" versions incorporate some modifications in freenet.jar that make for better management of connections. Build 5109 does not have a separate painkiller version at this time that I know of. It *may* have included the painkiller features so that a separate build isn't needed. I'll have to check my frost message archives and find out. I've also taken the liberty of updating the default bookmarks in 5107 and 5108 to the set used in 5109 because some of the old defaults no longer work because their creators quit updating them.
Note: Because I've never run freenet on linux, the instructions on this page are for windows users. Linux users should start with the Readme file in the archive.
Extract the files into whatever directory you want freenet to run from. c:\freenet or c:\program files\freenet for example.
In order to run freenet, you need to have the latest version of Sun's java runtime environment. There are other JREs around, but freenet works best with this one. Java2 1.4.2 and higher work fine but because the latest versions of several tools are being compiled on java 1.5.0, you're better off to just go with 1.5.0. To find out what you have, just open a DOS box and type "java -version" on the command line:
C:\>java -version java version "1.5.0_12" Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_12-b03) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_12-b03, mixed mode, sharing)
If you get a result like this with the build number starting with 1.5.0 (or higher) then freenet (and other utilities) will work on your system
You can get the Java2 JRE version 1.5.0 is here: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp
On that page, scroll down til you see "Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 Update 12", click the download button for that package. When the download page loads, you have to click the "Accept" radio button to accept the license agreement before you can download the file. After that, check the box on the line with " Windows Offline Installation, Multi-language jre-1_5_0_12-windows-i586-p.exe 15.80 MB" and then click on " Windows Offline Installation, Multi-language" and your download should start. Once it's done go ahead and install it.
To install freenet, simply extract the files from the archive into the directory of your choice.
Freenet does come with a configuration program "NodeConfig.exe" that you can use to set up freenet, but I personally find it easier to just edit the "freenet.ini" and "flaunch.ini" files in the freenet directory. It's better to do it that way and once you've got things set you seldom need to mess with it again. My opinion is that it's better to just forget about "NodeConfig.exe".
All you need is to edit a few lines, save the files and freenet is ready to go.
Note: It's a good idea to use an editor like notepad to work with these files because it saves them as plain ASCII without adding any formatting or control codes that would probably either give freenet a headache or just break the files.
Start by opening the file "flaunch.ini".
It'll look like this:
[Freenet Launcher] JavaExec=C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_12\bin\java.exe Javaw=C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_12\bin\javaw.exe JavaMem=default Priority=0 PriorityClass=64
Change the "JavaExec=" and "Javaw" entries so that they contain the paths to where "java.exe" and "javaw.exe" are located on your system and save the file
Next you need to edit a few lines in "freenet.ini"
The first line to look at is "%ipAddress=" If freenet cannot determine your IP address by itself, you will need to set it here. This can happen if you are using windows internet connection sharing or you're connected to a LAN or other NAT setup.
Since I am using Windows Internet connection sharing, I went to http://www.dyndns.com/services/dns/dyndns/ and created a free dynamic dns domain and got the freeware "DynDNS Updater" program from http://www.kanasolution.com/download.php to make sure that dyndns always had the correct IP address automatically mapped to my dyndns domain.
If you have a static (unchanging) IP address, then enter it here. You can also put a dyndns domain name here:
%ipAddress=111.222.333.444
or
%ipAddress=yourfreedyndnsdomain.dyndns.org
In either case, be certain that you remove the % from the beginning of any lines that you change, otherwise freenet will ignore them
The next one is "listenPort=48990" this will be the port number that freenet will use to listen for incoming connections from other freenet nodes. You can change this to any number you like as long as it's higher than 1024 and lower than 65535, although you don't want to use the same port number as another app. That way lies confusion. If you are using any type of firewall, you need to be sure that it will permit incoming TCP connections on that port number.
Next is "storeSize=1024M" This tells freenet how much space it is allowed to use on your hard drive for it's data store. How much space you use is up to you and what you have available. The more space it can use for the datastore, the better freenet will run. The last time I installed it, freenet defaulted to using 256 Megs of space, but I quickly found that it runs much better with a minimum of 1024 Megs (1 GB), and I've seen recomendations for using 10 or 20 GB. To use 1 gigabyte of space, set storeSize=1024M, two gigabytes would be 2048M, four would be 4096M, ten gigabytes would be 10240M and so on.
When you set this, if you're not sure how much space to use, it's better to start with a smaller value and increase it later. If you reduce the value freenet ends up losing whatever part of it's datastore that exceeds the reduced value.
Bandwidth Limiting is important with freenet. If it's not limited, freenet will chew up all of your available bandwidth. In order to still be able to use other internet apps, you'll need to limit what freenet is allowed to use. I have set both "inputBandwidthLimit=" and "inputBandwidthLimit=" to 15360 bytes per second, which works fine on my 768/256 adsl connection. If you need to change these, find where they are in "freenet.ini" and read the several lines of comments there to get an idea of what settings to use.
Most of the rest of the settings in "freenet.ini" should not be changed unless you know a LOT more about freenet than is discussed here.
At this point, all that remains is to create a shortcut to "freenet.exe" and put it on your desktop, program menu or if you want freenet to start when the computer boots, put the shortcut in the "StartUp" entry of the program menu.
When freenet starts, you'll see the rabbit icon in your system tray by the clock.
Right-Click on it to start and stop freenet. *NOTE* if you use the "Configure" option on that right-click menu, it will run NodeConfig.exe which will overwrite your freenet.ini. I think it's much better to simply stop freenet, edit freenet.ini and then restart freenet.
To browse freenet websites (called 'Freesites') you can right-click on the rabbit icon and select "Open Gateway" or just load http://127.0.0.1:8888 in your web browser. From this gateway page you can find diagnostic information about your node and you can begin surfing at any of the freesites that come bookmarked on that page. Or you can just use any freenet link directly such as these two:
http://127.0.0.1:8888/SSK@XKgPxdSUjAcZrV0oTUGeXmoAGfIPAgM
,ZOJm89bQCLLZw7DJ23i4gw/mmsdev/6//
or
http://127.0.0.1:8888/SSK@~7-CGZZKXiKVoxSOlFPVBsDJXXwPAgM
,ckqhs1YME2xL0Ub3XcWpnA/watch/9//
These are two freesites that I have put up. The first is a freenet mirror of my Mixminion Message Sender distribution page and the second is the freenet version of my Lastdays Watch articles.
You'll note that the gateway page as well as many sites within freenet have a small graphic (95 x 32) assosiated with links to freesites. These are called 'Activelinks' and are part of the site they represent. The idea is that if the activelink loads, then the site probably will. Often the site will still load even if the activelink hasn't yet.
The freenet site has an "Important note for first time users" which bears repeating here:When you first start Freenet your node will know very little about the network, meaning that it could take several minutes or longer to retrieve a web page. Please be patient since Freenet will learn how to find information more effectively over time and its speed will gradually improve with use.
What this means is that when you first start freenet, the only other nodes it knows about are the ones in the "seednodes.ref" file. As it runs it collects references from other nodes about still more nodes, gradually building and updating it's routing table from this information.
A new node will probably need to be connected 24/7 (or as much as possible) for the better part of a week before it starts getting acceptable results (please note that 'acceptable' in freenet terms are completely different from other P2P programs). Some other things to help your node perform better:
- Run it 24/7 as much as possible.
- Get Frost (A freenet Messaging program sorta like usenet only it's entirely within freenet) and keep it running during that time as well.
- Assuming a standard broadband connection of between 256kbps - 768kbps upload bandwidth, set the upload bandwidth in freenet.conf to between 12K - 16K. Freenet's bandwidth limiter isn't the greatest, but this will give it enough bandwidth to perform well without killing the internet performance of the rest of your apps.
- At the very least, set your node's store to 1GB. You can always increase it later
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