IOVPN2

IOVPN  ultimately a two-layer onion routing network, comparable to three-layer systems such as Tor and I2P. Unlike Tor and I2P, however, IOVPN is optimized for confidentiality, performance, and censorship circumvention rather than anonymity against strong network adversaries. It is also a centrally curated network rather than a peer-to-peer permissionless one like Tor.

There are four different roles in the IOVPN  network:

• A centralized binder that maintains global state and acts as a root of trust
• Exits that connect to the open Internet
• Bridges that relay traffic between clients and exits
• Clients that maintain an end-to-end encrypted channel to an exit (via bridges), and access blocked information through this.

The two pillars of Geph's robust censorship resistance are:

• An extremely resistant bootstrapping protocol that allows clients and binders to communicate in an effectively unblockable, but costly and slow manner. Through this bootstrapping protocol, clients obtain information about bridges, and replace them if any become blocked.
• A state-of-the-art obfuscated bridge protocol that makes it very difficult for censors to detect bridges. This protocol uses a ScrambleSuit-style probing-resistant handshake with with features such as roaming and performance-based bridge selection.