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Merge branch 'dme26-main-patch-06580' into 'main'

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Fixed three typos in alpha documentation.

See merge request veilid/veilid!159
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Christien Rioux 2023-09-03 00:22:45 +00:00
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@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ First, let's look at the peer network, since its structure forms the basis for t
When a peer first connects to Veilid, it does so by contacting bootstrap peers, which have simple IP address dial info that is guaranteed to be stable by the maintainers of the network. These bootstrap peers are the first entries in the peer's routing table -- an address book of sorts, which it uses to figure out how to talk to a peer. The routing table consists of a mapping from peer public keys to prioritized choices for dial info. To populate the routing table, the peer asks other peers what its neighbors are in the network. The notion of neighbor here is defined by a similarity metric on peer IDs, in particular an XOR metric like many DHTs use. Over the course of interacting with the network, the peer will keep dial info up to date when it detects changes. It may also add dial info for peers it discovers along the way, depending on the peer ID.
To talk to a specific peer, its dial info is looked up in the routing table. If there is dial info present, then the options are attempted in order of the priority specified in the routing table. Otherwise, the peer has to request the dial info from the network, so it looks through its routing table to find the peer who's ID is nearest the target peer according to the XOR metric, and sends it an RPC call with a procedure named `find_node`. Given any particular peer ID, the receiver of a `find_node` call returns dial info for the peers in its routing table that are nearest the given ID. This gets the peer closer to its destination, at least in the direction of the other peer it asked. If the desired peer's information was in the result of the call, then it's done, otherwise it calls `find_node` again to get closer. It iterates in this way, possibly trying alternate peers, as necessary, in a nearest-first fashion until it either finds the desire'd peer's dial info, has exhausted the entire network, or gives up.
To talk to a specific peer, its dial info is looked up in the routing table. If there is dial info present, then the options are attempted in order of the priority specified in the routing table. Otherwise, the peer has to request the dial info from the network, so it looks through its routing table to find the peer who's ID is nearest the target peer according to the XOR metric, and sends it an RPC call with a procedure named `find_node`. Given any particular peer ID, the receiver of a `find_node` call returns dial info for the peers in its routing table that are nearest the given ID. This gets the peer closer to its destination, at least in the direction of the other peer it asked. If the desired peer's information was in the result of the call, then it's done, otherwise it calls `find_node` again to get closer. It iterates in this way, possibly trying alternate peers, as necessary, in a nearest-first fashion until it either finds the desired peer's dial info, has exhausted the entire network, or gives up.
### User Privacy
@ -89,7 +89,7 @@ Receiver privacy is similar, in that we have a nesting doll of encrypted peer ad
Each peer in the hop, including the initial peer, sends a `route` RPC to the next peer in the hop, with the remainder of the full route (safety + private), forwarding the data along. The final peer decrypts the remainder of the route, which is now empty, and then can inspect the forwarded RPC to act on it. The RPC itself doesn't need to be encrypted, but it's good practice to encrypt it for the final receiving peer so that the intermediate peers can't de-anonymize the sending user from traffic analysis.
Note that the routes are _user_ oriented. They should be understood as a way to talk to a particular _user's_ peer, wherever that may be. Each peer of course has to know about the actual IP addresses of the peers, otherwise it couldn't communicate, but safety and private routes make it hard to associate the _user's_ identity with their _peer's_ identity. You know that the user is somewhere on the network, but you don't know which IP address is their's, even if you do in fact have their peer's dial info stored in the routing table.
Note that the routes are _user_ oriented. They should be understood as a way to talk to a particular _user's_ peer, wherever that may be. Each peer of course has to know about the actual IP addresses of the peers, otherwise it couldn't communicate, but safety and private routes make it hard to associate the _user's_ identity with their _peer's_ identity. You know that the user is somewhere on the network, but you don't know which IP address is theirs, even if you do in fact have their peer's dial info stored in the routing table.
### Block Store Revisited
@ -111,7 +111,7 @@ The key-value store is a DHT similar to the block store. However, rather than us
When a user wishes to store data under their key, they send a `set_value` RPC to the peer's whose IDs are closest by the XOR metric to their own user ID. The value provided to the RPC is a signed value, so that the network can ensure only the designated user is storing data at their key. The peers that receive the RPC may return other peer IDs closer to the key, and so on, similar to how the block store handles `supply_block` calls. Eventually, some peers will store the data. The user's own peer should periodically refresh the stored data, to ensure that it persists. It's also good practice for the user's own peer to cache the data, so that client programs can use the user's own peer as a canonical source of the most-up-to-date value, but doing so would require a route to be published that lets other peers send the user's own peer messages. A private route suffices for this.
Retrieval is similar to block store retrieval. The desired key is provided to a `get_value` call, which may return th value, or a list of other peers that are closer to the key. Eventually the signed data is returned, and the recipient can verify that it does indeed belong to the specified user by checking the signature.
Retrieval is similar to block store retrieval. The desired key is provided to a `get_value` call, which may return the value, or a list of other peers that are closer to the key. Eventually the signed data is returned, and the recipient can verify that it does indeed belong to the specified user by checking the signature.
When storing and retrieving, the key provided to the RPCs is not required to be only the user's ID. It can include a list of strings which act as a path into the data stored at the user's key, targetting it specifically for update or retrieval. This lets the network minimize data transfer, because only the relevant information has to move around.