Help setting up i2p connection between 2 sideband apps pc/android

[u/Yawnos]

So I'm currently trying to setup the sideband app on my pc and on my android phone., I have i2p installed on the PC and i2pd installed on the Android phone, sideband is installed on both.

sideband works fine over the Wi-Fi as expected, but the intention is to use it from the phone while on mobile data or other Wi-Fi networks.

so far I can't seem to get the i2p network to send the message over the data connection. I'm wondering if anyone has any insight into setting this up as so far it seems to be going over my head.

I can see the connections making SAM tunnels in the router consoles

The PC sideband keeps switching it i2p B32 address on ever restart and the android one isn't. I'm not sure if it should be static or changing honestly.

I was hoping to get the respect b32 for each reticulum session for sideband and use them as peers to try to direct the network but I can't seem to get the pc b32 to stay put after restart and I'm having a hard time finding where to put there peer in on the android app once it is a consistent b32.

Sorry if I don't know what I'm talking about very clearly, I only dove into this a few days ago and I'm very much a noob at this.

The pc i2p has been up for 40+ hrs while the android i2pd has been active for 18 hours+ so far.

Thank you to anyone you has any idea how to help.

**UPDATE**

editing the Advanced RNS configuration under utilities seems to have allowed me to input the b32 address into the android sideband app, just added an i2p interface block and peer.

**UPDATE**

So I finally got around to testing the last change, and it turns out it works. sideband is now routing the traffic over i2p, works with messages nicely and low rez pictures , high rez will take several minutes (probably 2-5) for a 700KB image so, definitely don't expect a lot out of it. but I knew that going in.

Still don't know if I locked down the b32 of the PC SIdeband app but if its not it means I'll just have to update the peer if Sideband restarts. I may end up moving it over to a Reticulum Daemon if I can find one so I don't have to worry about sideband closing and taking Reticulum with it.

[u/Play_it3110]

Hey, in i2p you can create client and server tunnels. Im not so familiar with sideband, but if it uses IP and you can configure a proxy, you should be able to use I2P in between.

In I2Pd you have config files you edit to create those tunnels. In Java I2P there are helper pages (as far as i know) that help you create a tunnel.

You need to know the server b32 address, because it serves the connection and is the point to ask for a connection. The client can have different b32 adresses, because it starts the communication and tells the server with the request itself, who he is.

[u/Yawnos → u/Play_it3110]

Sideband is a Reticulum based messaging app that uses b32 keys for unique identifiers, so your ID stay with you even if you connect from another part of the world, so like i2p its not based on IP. That and packets travel the network 1 hop at a time, determining the next best hop at each node.

Reticulum being "transport agnostic" means it can use i2p like its just another ethernet /WiFi connection. and sideband is made to connect to SAM for automatic setup basically.

Only thing I really had to do was grab the b32's from RNSTATUS and add it into the config under its own i2p interface block. with the b32 of the destination Sideband's self generated i2p b32 as the peer address. A goes in config B, and B goes in config A.

I think somehow when I was messing around with the java i2p android apk (I think, its kind buggy and the SAM doesn't seem to work), I somehow ended up making sideband on the android phone keep a constant b32 even after restart. which is convenient because I can build a master list of interfaces to place in the config of new devices.

No idea how to do that on the PC's i2p console yet.

[u/Play_it3110 → u/Yawnos]

So, if i understand it correctly, you only need the set the b32 address of your pc, to be static? So that you can put each others peer address into the configs?

[u/Yawnos → u/Play_it3110]

Depends how I want to route it I suppose, but each I think each needs its b32 to not change, especially the android phone so its stable and I don't have to re-do the configs.

I can either do one master config that has all of them so they all interconnect. or I could route them back to the PC and in theory it should route it back out to other clients but I don't have 3 devices setup to test that at the moment.

[u/Play_it3110 → u/Yawnos]

In theory the keys should change if you used the tunnel wizard like in this doc https://i2p.net/en/docs/guides/creating-an-i2p-eepsite/

As i said i use i2pd and they have in their docs, that only if the key is left empty it will be replaced with a new one on every restart. https://docs.i2pd.website/en/latest/user-guide/tunnels/#client-tunnels