Kad-DHT Protobuf Messages, Peer Routing and Content Providers

[mxinden]

@brandon

If we are to draw the line between Libp2p and IPFS, does Libp2p only use the default /ipfs/kad/1.0.0 DHT for peer discovery?

Yes. E.g. see rust-libp2p:

libp2p/rust-libp2p/blob/b1859464c956824c45cb9767486af1334fab2a13/protocols/kad/src/protocol.rs#L43-L44

@brandon

therefore can’t be used to PUT / GET / PROVIDE values.

Not sure how this is handled in go-libp2p. In rust-libp2p, even though unaware of IPNS/IPFS it still offers geeting and putting (provider-) records.

@brandon

@mxinden

Curious to hear more! What language are you using? Are you targeting the IPFS DHT in specific or any libp2p based DHT?

I’ve been working on implementing LibP2P in Swift. I’ve managed to hack together all of the various Multiformats and Crypto/PeerID libraries, along with TCP, UDP, WS, MSS, Noise, MPLEX, mDNS and I’m working on getting Kad DHT, Floodsub and Gossipsub set up at the moment. It’s all very much a proof of concept though, the code is pretty gnarly.

Planning on making the GitHub repo public once I can get all of the basics working

That is great. Please keep us updated.

@brandon

Apologies if these questions are ignorant, I’m trying to read as much documentation/code as I can find before posting here.

No apologies needed! Impressed by your research work thus far. Also happy to jump on a call in case that is helpful, just send me a mail. In addition, would be cool to have you join the community calls sometimes. Libp2p Community Calls