toxcore/docs/TCP_Network.txt
2014-02-14 12:06:24 -05:00

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It has come to our attention that to achieve decent market penetration Tox
must work behind ALL internet connections, may they be behind enterprise NATs
or any other bad network conditions.
The people who have issues with the UDP direct connection approach seem to be a
small minority though it is hard to estimate how many.
This means that routing their packets using good nodes on the network will
probably not take a huge toll on the network and will assure that people
can use Tox regardless of the quality of their internet connection.
How it's probably going to work:
1. Alice, a Tox client on a TCP only network generates a temporary public key
and connects to a bootstrap server.
2. Using the bootstrap server she find and connects to a couple (exact number
to be determined later) number of random nodes that have TCP relay support.
3. She uses the onion through the TCP relay connections to send friend requests
or tell online friends which TCP nodes she is connected to and her temporary
public key.
4. Bob receives an onion packet from Alice telling him which nodes she is
connected to. Bob connects to these nodes and establishes a routed connection
with alice using that temporary public key.
5. That connection is used by both to transmit encrypted Messenger and A/V
packets.
6. If one of the nodes shuts down while it is currently routing traffic, Alice
and bob just switch to one of the other nodes they are both connected to.
Actual detailed implementation details coming soon.