As it currently stands, Monero defines *Garlic Routing* as the method in which @Kovri and @I2P create a message-based anonymous overlay network of internet peers.
In written form, the term *Garlic Routing* can be seen as early as June of 2000 in Roger Dingledine's [Free Haven Master's thesis](http://www.freehaven.net/papers.html) (Section 8.1.1) as derived from the term [Onion Routing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing).
>[I think that there was some attempt to come up with a plant whose structure resembled the 'leaky-pipe' topology of tor, but I don't believe we ever settled on one.]
>during the free haven brainstorming, there was a moment where we described a routing mechanism, and somebody said "garlic routing!", and everybody laughed.
so we for sure thought we had invented the name, at the time.
### In-depth Information
In technical terms, for @Kovri and @I2P, *Garlic Routing* translates to any/all of the following:
1. Layered Encryption
2. Bundling multiple messages together (garlic cloves)
3. ElGamal/AES Encryption
Note: as seen in [Tor](https://torproject.org/), *Onion Routing* also uses layered encryption but does not use ElGamal and is not message-based.
- Another way to envision layered encryption (in terms of Onion/Garlic Routing) is by replacing the onion/garlic with a [Matryoshka doll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll)
