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Comment by kodablah | Hacker News Reader

I've wondered about other signalling mechanisms. I figure you could use a DHT (js-ipfs/js-libp2p or webtorrent BT mainline) and put the offer directly on the DHT (AES'd?) or if it's too big to be a key, seed it as the stored value for its hash using those systems.

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I've worked with `js-ipfs` and their `js-libp2p`, they use a signalling server (actually two types of them):

- https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-webrtc-star

- https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-websocket-star

That would be going back to using a server for the handshake.

In regards to using a DHT, that's something I have not researched. I am not sure how long an offer is valid, were you thinking of being able to update them as needed whenever you want to establish a connection?

> In regards to using a DHT, that's something I have not researched. I am not sure how long an offer is valid, were you thinking of being able to update them as needed whenever you want to establish a connection?

Yes. I have toyed with js-libp2p to obtain "providers" based on a key, but I believe the part of js-libp2p that allows you to participate in the DHT isn't quite done [0]. I imagine you'd make a CID that would be a simple hash of some shared string. Then you'd tell the network you are a "provider" with that CID, and when requested, you give the offer (AES'd w/ shared string or other shared secret?). The client can just connect to the same DHT and give the hash and get the (encrypted?) offer. Not sure if IPFS has a way for me to prevent other people from serving/replicating the CID I am serving instead of forcing it to be a hash of the content. A similar approach can happen on BT mainline w/ an infohash maybe.

0 - https://github.com/ipfs/js-ipfs/pull/856

Thank you for sharing, will keep an eye out for that thread.

I did some research a year ago (https://aquigorka.net/post/how-to-find-peers-in-the-decentra...) and going back to it I found this repo that uses the DHT to connect peers: https://github.com/mafintosh/peer-network

The author is one of the main contributors to the Dat project so I'll do some catching up to see what they've come up with.

Although it uses Tor and is probably outdated, here is a PoC I wrote of bootstrapping a DHT network on the server side and using the client side to discover peers: https://github.com/cretz/tor-dht-poc

I saw you use IPFS in there, are you sure it did not use one of their signalling servers to find the peers?

Used one of my own in Go, in that same repo using IPFS libs. Also, more "bootstrap" server than "signalling" server as its websockets not webrtc.

I created swarm-peer-server [1] as a way to connect to specific peers over a DHT using a public key known ahead of time. I use this in a networked app I've built to perform WebRTC signaling between peers [2]. The networking and crypto works using modules popular in the Dat Project community.

The challenge is that multiple peers could announce under the same hash on the DHT. Thus I have code to perform a handshake to verify peers upon connecting.

Another project worth mentioning is hyperswarm [3], also created by the Dat Project folks. It's planned to be their new method of connecting peers on a DHT in Beaker Browser.

[1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/swarm-peer-server

[2] https://github.com/samuelmaddock/metastream/blob/master/app/...

[3] https://pfrazee.hashbase.io/blog/hyperswarm

Thank you for sharing. Metastream is very nice! I thought I was following Paul Frazee's blog but I wasn't (updated my feeds now) so, thanks for the link to the `hyperswarm` post too.

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