---
title: Private Routing
description: An overview of how private routing works in Veilid
weight: 5
layout: subpage
---
### Private and Safety Routes
Each node hop only knows about the next one This is similar to onion routing, but assumes that
the source is fully in control of the Safety Route and the destination is fully in control of
the Private Route.
To zoom in on the details, view the image directly.
Private routing is a balance of performance and security
Applications can make use of higher node hop counts if they desire
Future private routing advancements will be transparent to users
Currently the default is one hop chosen by the Safety Route, and one hop chosen by the Private Route, which leads to three hops total once compiled.
It may be important to increase hop count to 2 for users with critical safety needs and to protect from nation-state-level deanonymization where appropriate.
Existing research (on Tor) suggests that our existing hop count should be sufficient and provide comparable anonymity, but this should be revisited.
IP Privacy means your location is safe too
Users don’t have to do anything to use it
No IP address means no tracking, collection, or correlation