Hi!

I'm a student and I have to make a presentation about "anonymous surfing". I'll deal with the concept of oignon routing and mixes.

I'm not sure if I've understood everything correctly though. A mix is several proxis (anonymisers), and a mix cascade is several mixes. Some anonymising system work with only 1 mix (several proxies) and some others (like JAP) work with several mixes, with mix cascades.
Mix cascades being more secure than just a mix. Is it correct so far?

The encryption part is not very clear to me. Does each Proxi encrypt the connection? Or is it only on the level of a mix? Who and how can make the desencryption?

Thanks.

I'm a student
...which means you're asked to do research and experiment. With all due respect, but IMHO efficient research in this case would start by reading the Tor Wiki, experimenting by running Tor (quite easy). If you haven't read the Tor Wiki I would suggest you do because it explains everything you ask for from concepts like mixes to the practical gory details of encrypting traffic.

Thank you for your answer. I don't think that my questions should give the feeling that I didn't research anything. My first questions are actually more a need for confirmation or invalidation of what I understood so far.
I read the Tor, JAP and other documentations. The tor documentaion doesn't even mention the concept of mix or mix cascade. As for JAP, the documentation is quite well done, but I still couldn't understand how do the proxies work with eachothers within a mix.

I think my comprehension problem is:
is a mix only 1 proxy or several ones?
The JAP docuemntation let me thought that a mix is made of several proxies but it may be an interpretation mystake of mine.

The tor documentaion doesn't even mention the concept of mix or mix cascade.
You're right. That is JAP terminology.


is a mix only 1 proxy or several ones?
AFAIK a JAP "mix" is a connection between a JAP client and a JAP infoserver. A "cascade" then would be a grouping of mixes which could be somewhat compared to what Tor calls a "private network pathway". Emphasis on "somewhat" because JAP and Tor are different in design.

In the JAP Documentation Mixes are meaning proxies.

I'm surprised to read that mix is a JAP terminology. In wikipedia mix is used as a general term in association with tor (and not even with JAP that is not mentioned).
So if you have a look in wikipedia at the definition of Onion Routing, you can read: As single example for this concept: .

I'm surprised to read that mix is a JAP terminology.
Me too. What idiot said that? He must know sh*t!