Skip to main content

Pyrsia AutoNAT Implementation (IETF STUN)

Warning: This document is a work-in-progress.

Abbreviations used in this document​

  • NAT: Network Address Translation. A mechanism for connecting and routing between private networks and the public internet.
  • STUN: Session Traversal Utilities for NAT. An IETF standard for connecting applications over the public internet originating from private networks.
  • IETF: Internet Engineering Task Force. One of the groups that standardizes protocols on the Internet.
  • P2P: Peer-to-peer. A networking technology emphasizing decentralization and scalability.

Dependencies​

Hole punching​

libp2p-autonat (combined with libp2p-identify) correspond to STUN. This is used to allow private networks to connect and participate in the pyrsia peer to peer network.

Hole punching implementation notes​

A review of Hole punching in libp2p - Overcoming Firewalls by Max Inden is recommended, as that spells out the technical details of the libp2p implementation. Also note that libp2p may advertise non-routable networks to peers. We have implemented our own bootstrapping strategy. That is described in detail below.

We maintain a cluster of bootstrap servers behind the public url http://boot.pyrsia.link on that site, we return a round robin list of peer addresses through a JSON document. On startup, a pyrsia client performs a HTTP GET to http://boot.pyrsia.link/status and parses an array of peer multi addresses in the libp2p format. The client then begins an AutoNAT probe of the peer address.

graph TD; node[Pyrsia Node] --HTTP GET /status--> boot[boot.pyrsia.link] boot --> boot1[Boot node 1<br>PeerId A] boot --> boot2[boot node 2<br>PeerId B] boot --> boot3[Boot node 3<br>PeerId C] boot --> boot4[Boot node 4<br>PeerId D] boot1 --> json[JSON<br>Containing peer<br>addresses and<br>basic metrics] boot2 --> json boot3 --> json boot4 --> json json ----> node

Bootstrapping implementation notes​

The peers returned by the boot.pyrsia.link are currently implemented with a basic round robin algorithm. We are in the process of gathering peer metrics and may use those to inform this process in the future. Additional peers may be returned in the peer_addr array. Once an AutonatEvent::InboundProbe Request is received from the bootstrap node the client is fully connected to the Pyrsia p2p network.