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Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime"

pears.com

21–30 of 56 posts

Re: Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime"

#21
post #16

This looks exciting and I'm pleased to see more and more frictionless ways of making p2p apps. I've been building a somewhat similar hobby project [1] that aims to connect peers in the browser by piggybacking on open protocols out on the net (BitTorrent, MQTT, Nostr, IPFS, etc). This project seems to be using Hyperswarm which I've looked at for use as a peering medium but it seems like it's not supported in the brows…

I think the biggest thing we need to push for p2p apps is IPv6 just so that everyone has a real address without NAT

Re: Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime"

#23
>"Holepunch is a technology platform that allows tech developers to create apps with no servers whatsoever. The company provides its peer-to-peer platform on an open source basis, allowing developers to contribute to the project, and to utilize the open source code at no server infrastructure cost.

Holepunch provides a collection of “small javascript modules” which can be combined to create unlimited P2P apps, from VPNs to communication tools like Keet.

https://holepunch.to/"

This is the first I've seen of combining the ideas of a P2P framework and a client-side (which becomes "server-side" because a local P2P Client -- is also and/or can become a remote P2P Server) JavaScript execution engine...

Now that's... different! :-) (For lack of a better word!)

At least in a "that sounds novel!" kind of way...

It'll be interesting to see where all of this goes in the future!

Re: Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime"

#24
post #14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing its due to the NATs they use. Carrier-grade NATs with made-up IPs and symmetric NATs. You can have some kind of options for symmetric NATs. But I'm not too sure about carrier-grade NATs yet as I've never even written code for this yet.

No it's mostly the battery limitations. Keeping links open P2P requires keepalive because NATs will time out. Even with IPv6 there are usually stateful firewalls in the way that will time out. This means you're constantly sending little packets, and if you have a lot of links there's a lot of keep alive cycles that have to be serviced. This keeps radios and baseband hardware from being able to sleep, draining the bat…

This seems like it should be solvable by having the stateful firewall support e.g. Port Control Protocol (RFC6887). Obviously that has to be done by the network rather than the client, but what's stopping them? It can't be resource consumption, it's an efficiency measure for the network too and "we don't kill your battery life" is an advertisable feature.

Re: Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime"

#26
post #3

> Created by Holepunch, a Tether-backed company Is this the same Tether as in the USDT stablecoin that's been accused of pumping up the volume in Bitcoin markets and possibly being secretly insolvent?

you realize the biggest tether controversy involves them being briefly 800% more solvent than banks, instead of 1,000% more solvent than banks? and we know that because they’ve been investigated by multiple authorities in the US and paid fines for that specific reason? just making sure we are on the same page about the controversy

[deleted]

Re: Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime"

#27
What dreadful marketing drivel on their site.

It would be nice to see a technical overview, but this is absent from their docs. Looking at their modules reference docs the runtime seems to comprise:

- A distributed replicated log - Peer discover via a distributed hash table - UDP holepunching to set up direct connections - A TCP like protocol running over the UDP connection - Key-based crypto routing (ala wireguard)

I assume there needs to be some servers available to facilitate the holepunching. Not sure how that works.

https://pears.gitbook.io/pears-docs/

Re: Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime"

#28

Can someone help me compare this to libp2p, or just using webrtc with peer.js etc.. on both the peers? Is it just about having access to their DHT for session management?

It have something to do with tether but I'm can't parse all the marketing speaking on that page.

Re: Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime"

#29

What dreadful marketing drivel on their site. It would be nice to see a technical overview, but this is absent from their docs. Looking at their modules reference docs the runtime seems to comprise: - A distributed replicated log - Peer discover via a distributed hash table - UDP holepunching to set up direct connections - A TCP like protocol running over the UDP connection - Key-based crypto routing (ala wireguard)…

> needs to be some servers available to facilitate the holepunching

Not needed. Other phones can help you determine connectable ports. You can create a phone-to-phone overlay and even puncture carrier-grade NATs. See our birthday paradox attack and initial dozen SIM cards measurements: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.04658 Older university project, similar to Holepunch with more dev docs: github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp/

Re: Holepunch Unveils P2P Platform "Pear Runtime"

#30
post #3

> Created by Holepunch, a Tether-backed company Is this the same Tether as in the USDT stablecoin that's been accused of pumping up the volume in Bitcoin markets and possibly being secretly insolvent?

Genuine curiosity: What's the issue with a company being backed by Tether? I understand that, as it stands today, Holepunch appears to be operated or contributed to by several staff members from Bitfinex and Tether. However, if Holepunch is open source and Tether were to implode, Holepunch would still exist and could be adopted by anyone, irrespective of Tether/Bitfinex, etc., correct?

because using kleptocurrencies implies bad engineering decisions. code will likely have Blockchain were you could have used a queue, etc.

it's like seeing something was a java applet or activex component in the 2000s

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