Frequently Asked Questions
From RetroShare Wiki
Frequently Asked Questions about RetroShare.
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GENERAL QUESTIONS.
1-1 What’s so great about RetroShare Instant Messenger anyways?
RetroShare combines Chatting and Instant Messaging with your friends and filesharing. You have only connections to your trusted friends, not to every peer, so it is secure and safe. All is serverless, opensource and encrypted. You can search for files, which all your friends share. With turtle hopping even the friends of your friends can provide files while staying connected only to your trusted direct neighboring friends. Channels allow sending messages and recommending files to select groups of friends.
1-2 Why would I want to share using RetroShare Instant Messenger?
RetroShare Instant Messenger allows you to share information and files with only the people you want to allow. We use it to access information when away from home, and to share stuff with friends.
1-3 What is a Friends-to-Friends network?
Friend to Friend (F2F) is the new paradigm after peer-to-peer (P2P). While P2P connected you for sharing with neighbors all over the world, F2F maintains connections only to your trusted friends as neighbors. See the Wikipedia for F2F, linked in our Link-Section.
1-4 How many people are required for a working RetroShare friendslist network?
Because RetroShare Instant Messenger is a private filesharing network, it doesn't really matter how many people use RetroShare, the network will function well with only a couple of friends in the Messenger. Of course, the amount of material and the network availability both improve as your friendlist grows. Remember that a RetroShare connection allows direct secure communication only between the two peers/friends, and no one else. The amount of available shared files increases as you Instant Message with RetroShare to more and more friends. As you connect to more people the AutoDiscovery system introduces you to the friends of friends. You can accept or deny to connect to friends of friends (one hop only is offered!!) This allows the network to expand and develop if you have not enough friends to be your trusted friends. But it is recommended to tell all your friends to Chat with RetroShare, because then you have enough trusted direct friends and do not rely on friends of friends to keep the network up. Just tell your friends and commit each other to be constant online with RetroShare, then you have always only trusted friends online.
1-5 How can I make sure I have the best connection possible?
Once you have swapped your PQI-Certificate with your friend and both AUTHenticated the friend (and if port and IP and firewall and router settings are okay) you connect automatically each online-session with your friend. Just make this set up once and you always connect automatically to your friend again in a secure and serverless way.
1-6 How can RetroShare claim the best possible connection speed?
You have really great download speeds at RetroShare, as they are private, encrypted and direct connections. The transfer from you to your friends depends of course on your upload speed. So ask your provider how fast you can upload. And: You can set in options the upload speed and the maximum speed for a transfer for a single friend. So have a look there to increase the bandwidth and ask your friend as well to grant you more speed as set by default.
1-7 Is RetroShare safe and secure? Does anyone else know, what I´m sharing?
Of Course RetroShare is safe and secure ;). The more you have only trusted friends in your list (the more, the better), the safer is the connection to your neighbor. Quick Answer: This Chat Messenger is private and secure, but it is not anonymous, as you see all the files of your trusted friends - and so they do. Because, RetroShare is a private network. Only you and your peers can see which files you are sharing. Every peer must be authenticated and approved before a connection will take place, and all communication is also encrypted using standard openSSL techniques. RetroShare is, however, not an anonymous file-sharing network. Your friends know who you are, and what you are sharing. No one else on the network can see this information. The friends of your peers also know of your existence, and can attempt to connect to you through the Auto-Discovery system. Your security is primarily dependent on the reliability of the people you connect to. Connect to trustworthy people and your files will be safe. Allow anyone to connect - who knows what will happen.
===1-8 Why should I maintain another IM-Network, when I'm barely able to keep my ICQ/MSN/GTalk contacts in sync?** RetroShare is more than just an instant messenger like MSN or Yahoo, it is also a private p2p file sharing network. You can share files with your friends and you can search through your friends files as well.
1-9 Is there a plugin for the Telepathy framework or Pidgin?
Getting Connected.
2-1 Where can I download RetroShare?
http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/downloads.html
2-2 How do you install RetroShare?
This varies on different operating systems. See this guide: InstallGuide
2-3 Why won't it connect?
You may not be able to connect for several reasons. To connect to someone you must add them to your friends list and they also must add you. If you do not both add each other then you will not connect. Also, make sure both of your firewall settings are correct in the settings. For more help post a message on the Sourceforge project forum.
2-4 Can I connect from behind a Firewall? How Do I set the Firewall?
Yes you can, if UPnP is working you will not need to perform any extra steps. Currently this only works on Linux. Otherwise see 2-5 for how to setup port forwarding on your firewall/NAT.
2-5 How do I enable Port Forwarding in my Router/NAT?
The default port is 7812. This port on the router needs to be forwarded to your PC running RetroShare. Also, you can change the network setting in RetroShare to "External (Forwarded) Port".
2-7 How do I connect to a Friend?
Send them your certificate. Import their certificate. If UPnP is working and OpenDHT is working you should be able to connect.
2-8 Which certificate must I send?
Your certificate.
2-9 How do I get a RetroShare Certificate
A certificate is generated for each user when they start up the program for the first time.
2-10 Auto-Login doesn't do anything on Linux
Auto-Login is a Windows only feature at the moment.
DOWNLOADING & SHARING
3-1 Who should I get to sign my Certificate?
Your friends who trust you and have verified that your certificate is yours should sign your certificate.
3-2 Why if my friends Certificate is not approved by RetroShare?
3-3 Should I Sign this Certificate?
Only sign certificates if you are able to verify that the certificate belongs to the person you think it does.
3-4 How do you verify a certificate?
If you transfer the certificate via a USB drive you can verify the certificate. Also, if you were to verify the checksum of the certificate in person or over the phone with the person if you recognize their voice.
3-5 Does my friend need RetroShare to receive files?
Yes.
3-6 How do I know if another RetroShare Friend has shared something for me?
Your friends shared files will be listed in the right side of the "Files" tab. There may be a slight delay in updating this list. You may need to click on the pluses to expand folders that your friend has to see all the files in them.
3-7 How do I send a file to someone on my contact list? What if it is over 2 GB?
Files over 2GB have some issues. These issues will be fixed in a future release of RetroShare (as of 8/5/2008).
3-8 Does RetroShare support resuming for transfered files?
Yes.
3-9 Can I download the same file from several users?
Yes. RetroShare searches through all your friends files looking for a matching file hash. Once it finds a friend that has a file with a matching hash it will begin downloading the file from that friend.
The new version (as of Aug 14th, 2008) (we're working on it now) will support downloading from multiple friends in parallel.
3-10 How fast is the upload and download speed?
Depends on your connection and other traffic, but it is usually limited by the upload capacity of the user uploading.
3-12 What can I share using RetroShare?
You can share any file type with RetroShare: Pictures, videos and documents.
TECHNICAL
4-1 How does RetroShare know my friend's IP address and port? Why don't I need a static IP address? What is DHT for?
RetroShare posts your IP/Port information to a Distributed Hash Table (DHT). Other RetroShare users in your network can query the DHT to find your IP/port information to connect to you. The DHT acts as a 'third-party' which everyone can access.
You should have DHT enabled. When the DHT is down (it's back up now [as of Aug 14th, 2008]) you may not be able to locate your friends if their IP or ports change, but it shouldn't affect established connections.
For more information see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table
4-2 What is turtle F2F?
Turtle F2F allows you to download files from a friend's friend's computer by relaying the request via your common trusted friend.
4-3 How does the security/privacy work?
TODO
4-4 What does "Trust" mean in RetroShare?
TODO
4-5 What is the AUTH(enticate) Code for?
This is no longer used. The AUTH code was a 4 character Hexadecimal number derived from your certificate. It was designed as extra Authentication for your friends.
4-6 Is RetroShare Open Source?
The licensing scheme for the different parts of RetroShare is:
openSSL :BSD style KadC :GPL + exception (asked author for exception) threads :LGPL RetroShare LIbrary :LGPL RetroShare GUI + QT :GPL + exception.
4-7 Where have you released the source code?
Latest sources are available on Sourceforge at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=178712
MISCELLANEOUS
5-1 Is Jabber XMPP used for the Message transfer protocol?
No. The messenger uses a proprietary protocol.
5-2 Could other Services be provided over this type of Private Network?
Yes.
Why are your mailing-lists and your website in english?
RetroShare's developers come from all around the world and english is the only language they can use to communicate together. Although great care is given to the translation of RetroShare in various languages, maintaining translations of our website costs too much more time than we can afford.
What to do if I can't find an answer to my question here?
Have a look at the Wiki.
Search the forums for your question. There are many solutions to problems on using our programs.
If your question still was not answered, post it on the forums or mail a fitting mailing-list.
