$ cd pranavchip.com && cd /blog

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                    https://between-the-cracks.onion
                               2025-08-25                            

and no, that is not a valid URL. it's just this post's title! today we
explore the niche, bizarre, and yet simply very technical architecture
of the Tor Network.

this is a pretty... involved topic to cover, and I may switch
between informal tumblrism lowercase and "proper punctuation" quite
a bit. academic writing draws the spirit of my highschool english
teacher out of me :3

so let's break this down into key sections, and then work through
it together:
1. defining the onion
2. peeling the onion
3. value of the onion
4. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the onion
5. idk other onion stuff (this analogy is wearing thin)

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(i) What is Tor?

    Tor = "The Onion Router". To steal from Wikipedia <3

        "Tor is a free overlay network for enabling anonymous
        communication. It is built on free and open-source software run
        by over seven thousand volunteer-operated relays worldwide, as
        well as by millions of users who route their Internet traffic
        via random paths through these relays."

    Now that's a pretty fire explanation but I shall use a diagram to
    illustrate. Hmm... The diagrams I wanted to use look like they were
    made before 2005. archaic. I may have to make my own!! behold...

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I can kinda see what I was going for here, but the way I wrote this
makes me *cringe*. I don't remember why I never finished this. Maybe
I'll revisit this sometime!

Prae; 2026-04-03

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