README.md

SimpleP2P

The following is a simple "P2P" libary, really, messages are multicast via UDP to any client that's listening. Clients tag their messages with a UUID so that they don't act on their own message (since each client is both listening and sending on the same multicast port).

Instructions for building

I wrote this on Ubuntu 12.10, I installed the following packages:

sudo apt-get install build-essential # probably already installed
sudo apt-get install cmake
sudo apt-get install libboost-dev
sudo apt-get install libboost-system-dev
sudo apt-get install libpython3.3-dev
sudo apt-get install libboost-date-time1.49.0
sudo apt-get install libboost-dev
sudo apt-get install libboost-iostreams1.49.0
sudo apt-get install libboost-system-dev
sudo apt-get install libboost-system1.49-dev
sudo apt-get install libboost-system1.49.0
sudo apt-get install libboost1.49-dev

To build:

cmake . && make

To test:

./runtest.sh

Challenges encountered

This took more than four hours -- my wife is mad that I'm not doing chores :-P

I've written native Python extension modules before, so this wasn't much of a challenge-- what was a little difficult was finding a suitable, simple example that could be easily adapted fit my needs.

I decided not to built an actual object, and I only implemented the bare minimum of what the pseudo code asked for (which was to gather all nodes available, send a message, then verify that all nodes responded).

Handling CTRL-C in a native Python extension module

This a little tricky-- not as straightforward as just adding a signal handler, but my google-kung-foo found a suitable answer.

Handling this in boost::asio also took a little googling-- because I wanted to cleanly tear down the asio server.

Asynchronous vs synchronous

This was implemented using async methods from boost::asio (examples online were easy to adapt)-- I used async to start because of considerations for how something like this might be used in a larger application. You could throw the synchronous communications in a thread, but usually it's better to avoid the threading and place the library in the event loop of the application. To do this though, you need to write things asynchronously and have a method that allows the user to hook the library into the event loop. For boost::asio, this would be the io_service::run_one method.

Figuring what exactly constitutes "P2P"

I started out implementing things in TCP, but decided that it'd take too much time to figure out how to coordinate the clients. Using multicast UDP seemed like the easiest way to get something that resembled P2P.

Limitations

This type of "P2P" is multicast-- it does not use a central server, DHT, or a supernode to perform any sort of coordination between the peers. Large amounts of traffic will probably flood the network.

A better implementation would probably just use multicast for node discover, then TCP, or plain UDP (non-multicast) for message transmission.

As for the multicast aspect, multicast usually doesn't travel past the local network segment, so this code will only work with devices behind one router.

The client must be written to be portable

Platform, Libraries

The source uses boost, which is more than a multi platform layer, but it provides this too. Any networking, interaction with time libraries, and anything else that's outside the standard library (std::) should go through boost. Except where standard C libraries can be used safely (in this library ::signal() was used).

Build system

The build system used is CMake-- which provides cross-platform compilation.

Simple test program in native code

The simple test program written in native code is contained in the simplep2p-cli program, to run:

cmake . && make
./src/simplep2p-cli recv &
bg0=$!
./src/simplep2p-cli recv &
bg1=$!
./src/simplep2p-cli recv &
bg1=$!
./src/simplep2p-cli recv &
bg1=$!
./src/simplep2p-cli recv &
bg1=$!
sleep 1
./src/simplep2p-cli send
kill $bg0
kill $bg1

Create bindings in a managed language

The binding are written for Python, the module exposes several simple function:

Help on module simplep2p:

NAME
    simplep2p - SimpleP2P python module

FILE
    /home/jam/Documents/GitHub/SimpleP2P/test/simplep2p.so

FUNCTIONS
    get_peer_count(...)
        get a count of available peers
    
    send_message_to_peers(...)
        send a message to all available peers
    
    wait(...)
        wait for a message from a peer

The python module can be built with the pybuildext.sh script.

Create a test program in the managed language

The following test program is implemented in Python, the following script is in test/send.py:

import sys
import simplep2p as s

peer_count = s.get_peer_count()

if peer_count == 0:
    print "FAIL: no peers"
    sys.exit(1)

response_count = s.send_message_to_peers("hello_there")

if response_count == peer_count:
    print "PASS"
else:
    print "FAIL"
    sys.exit(1)

Starting a peer is even simpler, from test/wait.py:

import simplep2p as s
s.wait()

The Python test sequence can be lauched via the script: test/runtest.sh.