Why can Freenet store data permanently?
Because we can’t find a way to do this without compromising Freenet’s other goals. For example, people often suggest that someone’s node could just never drop data they want to cache permanently. This, however, won’t work because even if the data is still available on their node, there is no way to ensure that requests for that data will be routed to that node. We have considered many other ways that Freenet could store data permanently, but they either won’t work, or compromise Freenet’s core goals of anonymity, and scalability. However, if you simply reinsert your data regularly, or if it is regularly downloaded (not by the same person as it would be cached on their node and the path to their node), it should remain available indefinitely.
