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What I don't get is, this makes it sound like applications can have peer to peer connections "on their own" but where does this actually work. If I have control over the whole device I might as well use a vpn, if I don't how do I ensure the firewall, network, etc. are all set up to allow the traffic necessary?

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That’s the beauty of it. The app end user doesn’t have to do anything.

The iroh endpoint will determine its location in the world by probing the configured relays using QAD (similar to STUN). It will then choose a home relay and establish a https connection to it.

When another iroh endpoint wants to talk they first briefly talk via that relay, then hole punch and establish a direct connection.

All of this happens in the background without the user even noticing. It’s also very lightweight - runs on an embedded computer with 2 megabytes of RAM.

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