libp2p

GloFlow is using the Go-lang libp2p implementation.
https://github.com/libp2p/go-libp2p

network transports

supported libp2p transports:
| protocol | libp2p package | status | | ————– | —————– | ———– | | TCP | libp2p-tcp | (primary) | | WebSockets | libp2p-websockets | (secondary) |

supported capabilities:

• NAT traversal
  • libp2p-circuit-relay-v2
  • libp2p-autonat
  • libp2p-hole-punching
• Secure communication
  • libp2p-tls
• Discovery
  • bootstrap
• Protocols

Peer identity:

• PeerId:
  • each peer is given a globaly unique name
  • verifiable link between peer and their public key (peer_id is a hash of pub-key)
  • can be used in combination with peer public-keys to verify peer identity (authentication)
  • its a multi-hash
  • each peer controls a private key
    • how are we generating this private key on each peer?
    • how are we storing it on each peer?

Muliaddress

• encoding multiple layers of addressing into a single path structure
• multiaddress includes peerID, public IP of some sort, port number, transport protocol to be used.

Connection encryption

• all connections between peers are encrypted
• peer private-keys are used for encryption, and can be verified to come from that peer via its public-key
• encryption of connections assures among other things that if relay-peers are used (peers that relay data between multiple other peers) they cannot read relayed data.

Peer Store

• each peer has this temporary store
• holds a list of known peers that a particular peer is connected to
• should be persisted on peer shutdown to avoid having to rediscover peers on each startup

Authorization

• libp2p does not implement this part of security
• GF will need to implement a authorization mechanism to verify peers are permited to interact with particular data and conduct actions.

Protocols

• protocol handlers
  • functions that handle data incoming for a particular protocol ID
• protocol negotiation
  • listening peer on the other end will check the incoming protocol id against the registered protocol handlers
• protocol ID
  • each protocol supported by peer is identified by it
  • ibp2p will route each protocol id to its handler function using exact literal matching of the protocol id

Content Routing

• Content routing provides a way to find where content lives in the network
  • steps:
    1. Peers provide (announce) to the network that they are holders of specific content
    2. Peers issue queries to find where that content lives
• content routing modules:
  • @libp2p/kad-dht
  • @libp2p/delegated-content-routing

Peer Routing

• way to find other peers in the network by issuing queries using a Peer Routing algorithm
• If the algorithm is unable to find the target peer, it will return the peers that are “closest” to the target peer, using a distance metric defined by the algorithm
• peer routing modules:
  • @libp2p/kad-dht
  • @libp2p/delegated-peer-routing