Definition-What does anonymous network mean?
Anonymous networks allow users to access the Web while preventing any tracking or tracing of identities on the Internet. This type of online anonymity moves Internet traffic through a global network of volunteer servers. Anonymous networks prevent traffic analysis and network monitoring-or at least make it more difficult.
Bkzzz explains the anonymous network
An open source anonymous software that is freely available to the public is called Tor. Tor software hides the user’s location and/or usage. Another anonymous network is Freenet, which enables users to anonymously publish “free sites” as well as share files and chat on forums. Another anonymous network is I2P. I2P identity-sensitive networks are distributed and dynamic in nature, and they route traffic through other peer nodes.
In order to use Tor, users must run onion routing. This technology encrypts the communication and then bounces it to a relay network operated by volunteers around the world. Users who want their Internet searches to remain private use anonymous networks. In the Tor network, Internet traffic is sent to various routers at once. The Tor node or exit relay is shown as the actual originator of the communication, not the sender.
Even if Tor prevents traffic analysis, it cannot prevent traffic confirmation, end-to-end correlation and testing. At the 2005 IEEE Symposium, Steven Murdoch and George Danezis published an article on security related to traffic analysis technology. In their article, they proved that the anonymous network allows partial network views so that it can be inferred which nodes are being used for anonymous stream relay.