To run it, use the following command for the client:
python hexchat.py -c logfile jid1 'password1' jid2 'password2' ... -s local_ip local_port user@chatserver remote_ip remote_port
where each" jid" is a login of the form username@chatserver. local_ip and local_port are the local ips and ports hexchat should bind to (this is what you should tell Tor is your bridge). The user@chatserver that follows is the login that the client's hexchat program should contact when initiating a connection. Finally, remote_ip and remote_port are the ip address and port you want the server's hexchat to connect to. This should be the ip and port of the actual bridge.
Then for the server, you would run:
python hexchat.py -c logfile jid1 'password1' jid2 'password2' ...
, where each jid here is NOT one of the jids the client is using. One of them should be the user@chatserver jid used in the client startup command. This user@chatserver cannot be a gmail account. Google will not send messages to a gmail account that is not on your contact list, but it has no problem with jabber.org accounts (and possibly others). Gmail accounts are by far the fastest, so you might want at least 2 or 3 of those per computer.
Here is an example:
client:
server:
Now when you tell the client's tor to use 127.0.0.1:5555 as a bridge, the data will be forwarded to the server, which will in turn forward the connection and data to <some bridge's ip address>:<some bridge's port number>. Just be sure both computers (or you can use the same computer if you want) have hexchat up and running before you start Tor. It takes a couple of seconds for hexchat to start up.
I plan to implement a whitelist for the ip addresses that the server is willing to connect to (note that as of now, the client could specify any local or remote ip address for the server to connect to).
Some feedback on performance would be really helpful. I would like to know how the connection is for other people. Here are some questions I am trying to answer:
*How the speed compares with a normal Tor connection?
*For which [kind of] sites does it work well for? For which sites is it too slow? In particular, how does it do with:
-youtube?
-news sites?
-blogs?
-social media?
*Does it ever stop loading or disconnect you from a website? Does it ever disconnect you from the bridge?
Also, check out the trac ticket and/or the git repository every now and then. I am still polishing off the code, so it might get faster.
Thanks for offering to help,
Alex