Re:An off-grid social network
by the8472 on Thursday April 06, 2017 @03:27PM
(#14053793)
> If I download e.g. uTorrent today and firewall off the hardcoded public bootstrap nodes, will it bootstrap?
Possibly, which mechanisms are used varies from client to client. Usually DHT bootstrap is not a primary goal but a side-effect of other mechanisms. Things that work in some clients:
magnet -> tracker -> peer -> dht ping
torrent -> tracker -> peer -> dht ping
magnet -> contains direct peer -> peer -> dht ping
torrent or magnet -> multicast discovery -> peer -> dht ping
torrent -> contains a list of dht node ip/port pairs
As you can see all but the last piggyback on regular torrent connections. But that's more because file transfers are the primary purpose and the DHT is not the raison d'etre of those implementations. If DHT connectivity were considered more important clients would also try more direct approaches.
Possibly, which mechanisms are used varies from client to client. Usually DHT bootstrap is not a primary goal but a side-effect of other mechanisms. Things that work in some clients:
As you can see all but the last piggyback on regular torrent connections. But that's more because file transfers are the primary purpose and the DHT is not the raison d'etre of those implementations. If DHT connectivity were considered more important clients would also try more direct approaches.