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Iroh 1.0

iroh.computer

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Re: Iroh 1.0

#92
We use Iroh in production at work, and I'm absolutely in love with it. I'd describe it primarily as "Tailscale-style hole punching as a rust crate", but of course you can sprinkle a lot of cool p2p stuff on top of the basic QUIC connections.

Re: Iroh 1.0

#93

I'm out of my technical depth here, but out of curiosity: is this meant to be a full replacement for the current IP address paradigm, or is this meant to be a specific tool on top of/alongside IP addresses that solves particular problems/frictions?

I would say it is not a replacement but an addition.

IP isn't going anywhere any time soon, but we add two capabilities on top. The ability to dial an endpoint by key, and the ability to get direct connections whenever possible.

That being said, if some other technology becomes popular that actually replaces the IP address paradigm, iroh is well positioned to make use of it. From the point of view of an iroh application developer nothing would change. You still dial by key, and iroh will just make sure under the hood to get you the best possible connection, IP or otherwise.

Re: Iroh 1.0

#94
Congrats on shipping

You need urgently a "versus" page that talks about tailscale/netbird/netmaker/zerotier/twingate/openziti

Looking at the use cases, right now I don't see anything that cannot be done with Tailscale...

Re: Iroh 1.0

#96
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…

Is that not what libp2p already offers? Not sure if it has QUIC out of the box, but hole-punching to UDP connectivity and then running QUIC over it isn't that hard.

The folks who made iroh worked on libp2p first, but found many limitations in libp2p's design. iroh is a better more flexible and powerful version of libp2p

Re: Iroh 1.0

#97
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…

isn't this exactly what tailscale (and also zerotier, netmaker) do? https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works

Those are intended to solve the problem at the OS layer, while Iroh (being a library) does it at the application layer.

Re: Iroh 1.0

#98
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…

Is that not what libp2p already offers? Not sure if it has QUIC out of the box, but hole-punching to UDP connectivity and then running QUIC over it isn't that hard.

Libp2p does have quic, at least the rust implementation.

Re: Iroh 1.0

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't this exactly what tailscale (and also zerotier, netmaker) do? https://tailscale.com/blog/how-nat-traversal-works

Those are intended to solve the problem at the OS layer, while Iroh (being a library) does it at the application layer.

Like https://tailscale.com/docs/features/tsnet ?

Re: Iroh 1.0

#100
post #17

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

Does this solve the problem of internet segmentation due to politcs? For example: dns control, tls certification bans (just this month both let’s encrypt and globalsign started revoking Russian certificates), once google starts really complaining about https it gets ugly. Russia aside, anyone else is closely watching (europe, brics, what have you)

I would say it is an excellent building block for application developers to route around the segmentation. There are several projects that work well in restricted enviroments that use iroh for some features. E.g. https://delta.chat/en/

E.g. you could write an excellent encrypted chat app using iroh, the Tor or Nym custom transport, and BLE or direct wifi for local connections.

You have to be careful though to make sure you configure the transports correctly in order not to expose data you don't want exposed. Iroh can be used in highly restricted environments, but the defaults favour performance over complete metadata privacy.

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