unamed-network

An Experiment that forms p2p Kademlia DHT network using WebSocket and WebRTC

If possible, will try to make this work with IPFS

Feature

• join room
• broadcast messages in the room
• listen to memeber join / leave and other peer's broadcasted messages

DEMO site

https://static.pastleo.me/unamed-network-202201-demo/

Design

• There are 2 type of node in the network, namely serviceNode and clientNode
  • a serviceNode is a nodejs running lib/unamed-network.js
  • a clientNode is a browser running lib/unamed-network.js
• on a normal Kademlia DHT network, location in the network of each node is based on its peerId, here is based on hash(room.name); nodes within the same room use full-connected (for now)
  • when serviceNode starts, it will join a room that name is their peerId
• websocket for connecting to a serviceNode, while WebRTC for a clientNode connecting to a clientNode
  • websocket connection can be directly established with addr, and thus can be stored as knownServiceAddr for boostraping into network
• to join a room, a node send out a find room packet (RPC between nodes) containing hash(room.name) to search for a room (or more precisely, a room member node), this packet can hop through many nodes, each node route the packet based on DHT
  • after finding room, the packet is responded with route of each peerId it traveled
  • with route of each peerId, a connect request packet is sent to the room member, so do WebRTC signal packets between the two
• to prevent a node with too many connection, k-bucket will tell if there are redundant connections to other rooms Not properly tested yet

Roadmap

• work with IPFS (IPFS pubsub is used as transport for now)
• able to find, join room and connect to other nodes
  • serviceNode -> serviceNode
  • clientNode -> serviceNode
  • serviceNode -> clientNode
  • clientNode -> clientNode (WebRTC)
• provided as a library (for unamed-world)
• detect peer connection lost and leaving
• use k-bucket to close redundant connections to other rooms not joined
• manage number of connections (especially for clientNode)
• retry on finding room
• other improvements to be add here

Development

1. git clone https://github.com/pastleo/unamed-network.git and cd unamed-network
2. npm install
3. cp env.js.dev env.js
4. npm run web and open http://localhost:8888 in your browser

You can open multiple tabs and try out room, messaging feature