A demonstration of peer-to-peer networking using Rust and IROH, showcasing how nodes can communicate without a central server.
In traditional client-server architectures, all communication goes through a central server. P2P networks instead allow direct communication between participants (peers):
Client-Server: P2P Network:
Server Peer ←→ Peer
↙ ↓ ↘ ↙ ↓ ↘
Client Client Client Peer ←→ Peer ←→ Peer
This example implements:
-
Node Discovery: Peers find each other using shareable tickets containing network addresses
-
Gossip Protocol: Messages spread through the network like rumors:
- When a peer receives new information, it shares with its neighbors
- Those neighbors share with their neighbors
- Process continues until all peers have the information
-
Distributed Communication: Any peer can:
- Create a new topic
- Join existing topics
- Broadcast messages to all connected peers
- Maintain peer-to-peer connections without central coordination
Built using:
- IROH: Modern P2P networking stack
- Tokio: Asynchronous runtime
- Gossip Protocol: For reliable message propagation
- Serde: Data serialization
- Clap: Command line interface
Create a new peer node:
cargo run -- openJoin an existing peer network:
cargo run -- join <ticket>This pattern can be applied to build:
- Distributed databases
- File sharing networks
- Decentralized social networks
- Blockchain networks
- Edge computing systems
[dependencies]
iroh = "0.1"
iroh-gossip = "0.1"
tokio = { version = "1.0", features = ["full"] }
clap = { version = "4.0", features = ["derive"] }
serde = { version = "1.0", features = ["derive"] }
anyhow = "1.0"