[litep2p](https://github.com/altonen/litep2p) is a libp2p-compatible P2P networking library. It supports all of the features of `rust-libp2p` that are currently being utilized by Polkadot SDK. Compared to `rust-libp2p`, `litep2p` has a quite different architecture which is why the new `litep2p` network backend is only able to use a little of the existing code in `sc-network`. The design has been mainly influenced by how we'd wish to structure our networking-related code in Polkadot SDK: independent higher-levels protocols directly communicating with the network over links that support bidirectional backpressure. A good example would be `NotificationHandle`/`RequestResponseHandle` abstractions which allow, e.g., `SyncingEngine` to directly communicate with peers to announce/request blocks. I've tried running `polkadot --network-backend litep2p` with a few different peer configurations and there is a noticeable reduction in networking CPU usage. For high load (`--out-peers 200`), networking CPU usage goes down from ~110% to ~30% (80 pp) and for normal load (`--out-peers 40`), the usage goes down from ~55% to ~18% (37 pp). These should not be taken as final numbers because: a) there are still some low-hanging optimization fruits, such as enabling [receive window auto-tuning](https://github.com/libp2p/rust-yamux/pull/176), integrating `Peerset` more closely with `litep2p` or improving memory usage of the WebSocket transport b) fixing bugs/instabilities that incorrectly cause `litep2p` to do less work will increase the networking CPU usage c) verification in a more diverse set of tests/conditions is needed Nevertheless, these numbers should give an early estimate for CPU usage of the new networking backend. This PR consists of three separate changes: * introduce a generic `PeerId` (wrapper around `Multihash`) so that we don't have use `NetworkService::PeerId` in every part of the code that uses a `PeerId` * introduce `NetworkBackend` trait, implement it for the libp2p network stack and make Polkadot SDK generic over `NetworkBackend` * implement `NetworkBackend` for litep2p The new library should be considered experimental which is why `rust-libp2p` will remain as the default option for the time being. This PR currently depends on the master branch of `litep2p` but I'll cut a new release for the library once all review comments have been addresses. --------- Signed-off-by: Alexandru Vasile <alexandru.vasile@parity.io> Co-authored-by: Dmitry Markin <dmitry@markin.tech> Co-authored-by: Alexandru Vasile <60601340+lexnv@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Alexandru Vasile <alexandru.vasile@parity.io>
Polite gossiping.
This crate provides gossiping capabilities on top of a network.
Gossip messages are separated by two categories: "topics" and consensus engine ID. The consensus engine ID is sent over the wire with the message, while the topic is not, with the expectation that the topic can be derived implicitly from the content of the message, assuming it is valid.
Topics are a single 32-byte tag associated with a message, used to group those messages
in an opaque way. Consensus code can invoke broadcast_topic to attempt to send all messages
under a single topic to all peers who don't have them yet, and send_topic to
send all messages under a single topic to a specific peer.
Usage
- Implement the
Networktrait, representing the low-level networking primitives. It is already implemented onsc_network::NetworkService. - Implement the
Validatortrait. See the section below. - Decide on a
ConsensusEngineId. Each gossiping protocol should have a different one. - Build a
GossipEngineusing these three elements. - Use the methods of the
GossipEnginein order to send out messages and receive incoming messages.
What is a validator?
The primary role of a Validator is to process incoming messages from peers, and decide
whether to discard them or process them. It also decides whether to re-broadcast the message.
The secondary role of the Validator is to check if a message is allowed to be sent to a given
peer. All messages, before being sent, will be checked against this filter.
This enables the validator to use information it's aware of about connected peers to decide
whether to send messages to them at any given moment in time - In particular, to wait until
peers can accept and process the message before sending it.
Lastly, the fact that gossip validators can decide not to rebroadcast messages opens the door for neighbor status packets to be baked into the gossip protocol. These status packets will typically contain light pieces of information used to inform peers of a current view of protocol state.
License: GPL-3.0-or-later WITH Classpath-exception-2.0