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Iroh 1.0

iroh.computer

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Re: Iroh 1.0

#71

Post by forsalebypwner »

RationPhantoms wrote: post #64
forsalebypwner wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their use of addressing by keys instead of by IPs seems to be the main differentiator. Also the support for custom transports (BLE, LoRa, Tor) which appears to be in progress and not yet fully implemented. I love Tailscale, it's deployed on all my devices. But I might check this out for the transports part in particular.

Tailscale uses MagicDNS which allows one to auto-generate a semi-memorable private hostname as well. I'm in the networking industry so I'm not seeing anything truly groundbreaking or that isn't offered elsewhere.

Yeah and my understanding of Iroh wasn't quite right either, it sounds like it's positioned to be more of a library to use in code, rather than a VPN solution like Tailscale.

I love MagicDNS - A long time ago I wrote a stupid Python script to have it continually generate MagicDNS names until one of them contained a word I was looking for.

Re: Iroh 1.0

#72

Post by gamegod »

Sounds good, but the first step in your quickstart is getting an API key, and I'm oh, so I guess your sales pitch was a lie and this is really just another Cloudflare-like play to build another intermediary in the internet. If that's not the case, then I shouldn't need an API key for hello world...

Re: Iroh 1.0

#73

Post by milkshakes »

handoflixue wrote: post #70
rklaehn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iroh is QUIC. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel here, just combining existing IETF RFCs in a creative way. Here is a concrete problem we solve. You have one device in your home WLAN behind a NAT. Your other device is in a 4g network, or behind another NAT at work. In most cases we can give you a direct connection between the two devices very quickly via hole punching, so you get the highest possible bandwidth a…

Excuse my ignorance on the subject, but what does this solve that VPNs didn't already address?

vpns typically add at least one hop. this has the possibility of connecting directly via hole punching

Re: Iroh 1.0

#74

Post by ascii0eks84 »

rklaehn wrote: post #16

I am one of the iroh developers. A question that frequently comes up: when will iroh support webrtc, or BLE, or LoRa, or ... Iroh as of now supports only IPv4, IPv6 and relay transports out of the box. There is such a large variety of potentially interesting transports out there that we can't support all of them without turning the codebase into an unmaintainable maze of feature flags. But we have added the ability t…

If you don't mind, what are other low-effort but high signal forums other than HN, Perplexity and X for accurate news that skip the annoying part?

Re: Iroh 1.0

#75

Post by dignifiedquire »

kamranjon wrote: post #50

To me this sounds like tailscale - does anyone have any insight into how what this is doing is similar or different?

Tailscale is built to be global to your device, while iroh is built to be embedded into each application. This allows application developers and users a much more fine grained and bespoke setup, than having a single global bridge.

Re: Iroh 1.0

#76

Post by tmzt »

dignifiedquire wrote: post #6

hey, I helped make this :) will try to answer questions where I can

I've been working on a mesh network for private AI models running remotely, controlled by mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.). The mesh is constructed like a piconet, a few devices controlled by a single individual, layered on top of the internet.

How does it support semi-connected devices, intermittent connection failures, etc?

Re: Iroh 1.0

#78

Post by dignifiedquire »

bel8 wrote: post #38
saberience wrote: post #25

This page is basically useless in explaining what Iroh is or does and why I should care.

As I see, it tries to explain. But as someone who's not a network specialist, I fail to see how this is not a glorified P2P DNS. Maybe this example helps: https://github.com/n0-computer/iroh#rust-library const ALPN: &[u8] = b"iroh-example/echo/0"; let endpoint = Endpoint::bind().await?; // Open a connection to the accepting endpoint let conn = endpoint.connect(addr, ALPN).await?; // Open a bidirectional QUIC stream l…

I would love to see that P2P DNS you are talking about

Re: Iroh 1.0

#79

Post by weavejester »

rklaehn wrote: post #67
astonex wrote: post #27

Not sure what the difference is between this and any regular P2P network?

A difference between iroh and many p2p networks is that we try to use existing IETF standards (QUIC, TLS) as much as possible instead of reinventing the wheel. An iroh connection is just a QUIC connection, using TLS and TLS ALPNs for protocol negotiation. If you look at an iroh connection using wireshark, it is just a QUIC connection. You can use all the existing tools, and a lot of things you learn when using iroh t…

Forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but does your use of the Mainline DHT mean that Bittorrent clients will be responding to P2P address lookups from Iroh?

Re: Iroh 1.0

#80

Post by tux3 »

milkshakes wrote: post #73
handoflixue wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse my ignorance on the subject, but what does this solve that VPNs didn't already address?

vpns typically add at least one hop. this has the possibility of connecting directly via hole punching

Modern VPNs based on wireguard can do direct connections with hole punching. It's just a lot more work to setup on your own, or you have to sign-up to a SaaS like tailscale and use their relays, and they'll do the hole punching for you.

Here this is a decentralized network with a lot of existing public relays. But in principle a VPN can solve a lot of the same problems. It's just that commercial VPNs are not decentralized, and doing your own wireguard setup is a pain.

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