Freenet's deployed Opennet topology uses uniformly random long-range contacts rather than Kleinberg-optimal distance-proportional selection, yielding an average routing length of 37.17 hops in simulation; adopting a 1/d distance distribution (r=1) reduces this to fewer than 13 hops — a 2.9× improvement achievable via a Kademlia-style bucket system.
From 2014-roos-measuring — Measuring Freenet in the Wild: Censorship-resilience under Observation
· §4.2
· 2014
· Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium
Implications
Implement a Kademlia-style bucket system for neighbor selection to achieve ~1/d distance distribution, which simulation shows reduces routing hops from 37 to <13 without removing bandwidth-based degree incentives.
For any P2P censorship-resistance overlay, validate that the deployed topology matches the design's distance assumptions before optimizing routing — suboptimal neighbor selection alone can cause 3× routing overhead.