webrtc-explorer

webrtc-explorer

tl;dr webrtc-explorer is a [Chord][chord-paper] inspired P2P overlay network designed for the Web platform (browsers), using WebRTC as its transport between peers and WebSockets for Signaling data. Essentially, it enables your peers (browsers) to communicate between each other without the need to have a server as a mediator of messages.

Badgers


Properties

• Ids have 48 bits (so that is a multiple of 4 (for hex notation) and doesn't require importing a big-num lib to handle over 53 bits operations)
• The number of fingers of each peer is flexible, however it is recommended to not pass 16 per node (due to browser resource constraints)
• Each peer is responsible for a segment of the hash ring

Usage

webrtc-explorer uses browserify

Create a new peer

var Explorer = require('webrtc-explorer');

var config = {
    signalingURL: 'http://url-to-webrtc-ring-signaling-server.com'
};
var peer = new Explorer(config);

peer.events.on('ready', function () {
    // this node is ready
});

Register the peer

Send and receive a message

Other options

logging

add the logging flag to your config

var config = {
  //...
  logging: true
  //...
};

How does it work

Read the CHORD paper Some important learnings that are part of webrtc-explorer, were done in webrtc-ring http://blog.daviddias.me/2014/12/20/webrtc-ring

Registering a peer

Updating the finger table

Signaling between two peers

Message routing