ArthurZhou / Piper

A message transfer protocol that uses all clients as relays

Piper

A message transfer protocol that uses all clients as relays

How does this work

Piper is a client-as-server network, similar to p2p, But all clients in the network are also relay servers.

This is similar to the IRC protocol. But Piper doesn't require a central server. Instead, all messages are transferred from one client to another. When a message is repeated multiple times (default 3 times). The relay server will stop repeating it any longer.

Message structure

{
  "operation": "msg",
  "msg": "",
  "name": "",
  "uuid": "",
  "jump": 0,
  "port": 0
}

operation tells relay servers what wo do with this message. Use msg when sending messages.

msg is the body of the message.

name and uuid include information of the sender. uuid is a random version 4 uuid.

jump shows how many times this message has been repeated.

port shows the port of the relay server which send this message to you.

Command line arguments

Use Piper --help to print help message

Usage: Piper [options] [ARGS]                                              
                                                                           
Options:                                                                   
  -s, --server <string>     Remote server address  split addresses with `;`
  -h, --host <int>          Local server port  default: 28174
  -n, --name <string>       Username  default: user-0
  -u, --uuid <string>       UUID(You should not change this by default)  default: <random v4 uuid>