Live Freenet or Die

Joshua T. Anhalt

We propose evaluating the degree to which the Freenet system fulfills
its design goals.  Freenet provides a decentralized peer to peer
content distribution system emphasizing anonymity guarantees.  Design
goals of this system consist of author and consumer anonymity;
deniability for system operators; resistance to denial of service
attacks; efficiency in storage and routing of information; and
decentralization of all network functions.  Other peer-to-peer content
distribution systems, such as Gnutella, will be used to provide a
comparative metric in these evaluations.

Should methods for undermining the anonymity and integrity of the
system be found solutions to combat these methods will be developed.
Additionally, attempts will be made to improve the degree to which the
system fulfills its system design goals.  Improvements and fixes
created throughout the course of this project will be evaluated and
submitted to the Freenet project for possible integration.