@nephys/plexus

Plexus

Dependency-free decentralized peer-to-peer network for storage and communication based on the Kademlia distributed hash table.

Contents

• Installing
• Testing
• Quick Start
• Storage
• Communication
• Documentation
• Resources
• TODO
• Support
• License

Installing

npm install @nephys/plexus --save

Testing

npm run test

This test will create a 50-Node Local Mesh Network and then go through the 4 following steps.

Step	Description
Item lookup	Testing if nodes can find an item on the network
Node lookup	Testing if nodes can find another node on the network
Broadcasting test	Testing if a node can broadcast to the rest of the network
Non existent item lookup	Testing if nodes dont find non existent data on the network*

* (The lookup should timemout and fail)

npm run chat

A demo CLI chat client to test communication between nodes.

npm run broadcast

Testing the broadcasting system between 3 node A, B & C where A & B know eachother, B & C know eachother as well and A & C don't know eachother but should be able to communicate regardless.

//  Expected output:

[A] b speaking
[C] b speaking
[B] a speaking
[B] c speaking
[C] a speaking
[A] c speaking

Quick Start

Creating a Plexus Node and joining the Mesh Network.

const plexus = require("plexus");

//  Node creation
const node = new plexus.Node({host: "127.0.0.1", port: 8080});    //  By default the host and port are 127.0.0.1:8080

//  Join the network
node.connect({host: "remote_ip", port: remote_port});

Storage

Storing and retrieving data on the Network.

//  Storing data
const item = node.store({key: key, value: value, republish: true});   //  If no key is provided it will default to the hash of the value stored

//  Retrieving data
const lookup = node.find({key: key});

//  The item exists on the Network
lookup.on("found", (result) => {
    console.log(result);
});

//  The item doesn't exist anywhere on the Network
lookup.on("timeout", () => {
    console.log("FIND request timed out");
});

Communication

Broadcasting to the whole Network.

(WIP, subject to forwarding loops under certain network conditions)

//  Sendind to the Network
node.broadcast({data: data});

//  Handling incoming Broadcasts
node.on("broadcast", (data) => {
    console.log(data);
});

Documentation

• Node
• Bucket
• Contact
• Item
• Message
• Router
• RPC
• Storage
• Vector Clock

Resources

• Kademlia Visualizer
• Kademlia Design Specification
• Kademlia: A Peer-to-peer Information System Based on the XOR Metric
• JSON-RPC 2.0 Specification

TODO

• Implement keep alive (ping contacts to keep the UDP hole open)*
• Implement Item expiration
• Implement Item propagation
• Improve the storage system
• Clean up code
• Finish implementing error handling using exceptions
• Add documentation
• Make broadcasting faster (master & slave broadcasting nodes?) Complete rework

* (WIP)

Support Me 🤝

If you like the project and want to support me you can do so by donating any amout to one of the following addresses or by using it in your own projects and sharing this repo.

Tank you! ❤️

• ETH 0x882fc9954991eaaa4c8f2de9145e3135660a1680

• BTC bc1q3ehnqqmckv7g45hy8su65q88h6arnfy7ar2tgt

@Nephys, 2021