2 ms·
From the FAQ: > How long does it take for a post to reach the most of the network? > [...] Long answer [...] > [...] In fact, it’s a little larger than one r
by tomsmeding 8y ago
From the FAQ:
> How long does it take for a post to reach the most of the network?
> [...] Long answer [...]
> [...] In fact, it’s a little larger than one request in a minute, because some nodes are behind restrictive firewalls and NATs, and they cannot be reached, they can only make requests out.
Regardless of the actual FAQ discussed here, the statement is made that "some" nodes are behind NAT's, implying that most will not be behind NAT's. Living in the Netherlands, I'm not sure about countries overseas in the Americas, but here I'd wager >99% of normal household PC's will be behind a router implementing NAT. This makes actual peer-to-peer communication nigh impossible here, and I'm always doubtful about nice peer-to-peer solutions that claim to be cool and such but sneakily have the ever-present requirement that you have a public IP address. I don't. Nobody I know does, except for VPS's and so forth. But I generally don't run a graphical client on my VPS.
Of course, theoretically, this should be solved by IPv6. But really I wouldn't know how to start using that, and whether my provider has all the hardware and software in place to actually have this work. (And whether my provider-issued router supports it, as well.)
Can anyone chime in on how the situation regarding NAT's is in the Americas? And does anyone have a good source on how to get started with IPv6 communication between peers, when I don't even know the stuff I mentioned above?
EDIT: I see that Aether has/seems to have the option to work around this problem by allowing one to run the backend (the thing that actually connects to the peer-to-peer network) on a different machine than the client. That would enable using a VPS to run the backend.
- vilifiedtwin 8y agoThis should work on a global switch like zerotier. Then the problem of NAT disappears.
- the8472 8y agoNot all NAT's are relevant. As long as they respond to port mapping requests or use endpoint independent mappings they can be traversed. Also note that IPv6 alone does not help because the recommended way to deploy it is to have firewalls in CPEs that block incoming connections by default, so applications still have to request the port to be opened, using the same protocols as for v4 NAT.
- rolleiflex 8y ago> because some nodes are behind restrictive firewalls and NATs That is just a weird turn of phrase on my part, will fix it. What I mean is: because some nodes are behind restrictive firewalls and [restrictive] NATs. In other words, most NATs work fine. Even if they don’t work fine, it has a process called a ‘reverse open’ where the inbound connection is requested by the receiving remote and the remote ‘captures’ and uses the same TCP socket. Even if that doesn’t work, as you’ve discovered, you can run the backend Ona VPS.
- tomsmeding 8y agoThanks for replying -- the client seems to work beautifully on osx here. It took some time to start showing post content, and I even restarted it once because it didn't seem to do that after a few minutes, but now it does, so that's good. My NAT is apparently a restrictive one, since I've got "Mapping failed, no router, or router uncooperative" as my port mapping status. But as you predicted, I've indeed got some inbound connections, so yay.
- Orochikaku 8y agoI unfortunately am getting the same error however I'm not getting any inbound connections either https://i.imgur.com/49VaP62.png https://i.imgur.com/49VaP62.png
- ithrewthat4351 8y agoTIL what reverse open is; nifty.