picoquic

Minimalist implementation of the QUIC protocol, as defined by the IETF. The IETF spec started with the version of QUIC defined by Google and implemented in Chrome, but the IETF spec is independent of Chrome, and does not attempt to be backward compatible. The main developer is Christian Huitema.

The first goal of this project is to provide feedback on the development of a QUIC standard in the IETF QUIC WG. Information on the WG is available at https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/quic/charter/. The in-progress version of the spec is available on GitHub at https://github.com/quicwg.

The second goal is to experiment with API for non-HTTP development, such as DNS over QUIC. Then there are plenty of other features we may dream off, such as support for multipath, or support for peer-to-peer applications. That's on the horizon, but not there now.

The code in this repo is a work in progress. In fact, the specification itself is a work in progress. The working group is progressing by running a series of meetings and of interop trials between several implementations, listed at https://github.com/quicwg/base-drafts/wiki/Implementations. The current interoperability matrix is listed at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D0tW89vOoaScs3IY9RGC0UesWGAwE6xyLk0l4JtvTVg/edit#gid=273618597.

Bastian Köcher has developed bindings of the picoquic library to RUST (https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/). His repository can be found here: https://github.com/bkchr/picoquic-rs. You may want to check it.

Development

Picoquic is currently developed as a Visual Studio 2017 project, and simultaneously tested on Windows and on Linux. It has a dependency on the Picotls implementation of TLS 1.3 (https://github.com/h2o/picotls). Picotls has two mode, a feature rich version that depends on OpenSSL, and a leaner version that only depends on the "minicrypto" library. For now, Picoquic uses the OpenSSL version, and has a dependency on OpenSSL.

The project consists of a core library (picoquic), of a test library (picoquictest), and of a test program (picoquicfirst). All these are written in C. In the Visual Studio project, the test library is wrapped up in the Visual Studio unittest framework, which makes for convenient regression testing during development. In the Linux builds, the tests are run through a command line program.

Milestones

As explained in the Wiki, Picoquic is actively tested against other implementations during the QUIC Interop days. See https://github.com/private-octopus/picoquic/wiki/QUIC-milestones-and-interop-testing.

The current version is aligned with draft 17. Most big features are now tested, including the interface between QUIC and TLS, 0-RTT, migration and key rollover. The state of development is tracked in the list of issues in this repository.

In parallel, we still plan to do an implementation of DNS over QUIC (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-huitema-quic-dnsoquic/).

We are spending time bettering the implementation. Until now the focus has been on correctness rather than performance. We will keep correctness, but we will improve performance, especially in light of practical experience with applications. Suggestions are wellcome.

Building Picoquic

Picoquic is developed in C, and can be built under Windows or Linux. Building the project requires first managing the dependencies, Picotls (https://github.com/h2o/picotls) and OpenSSL. Please note that you will need a recent version of Picotls -- the Picotls API has eveolved recently to support the latest version of QUIC. The current code is tested against the Picotls version of Thu Dec 20 10:26:18 2018 +0900, after commit 9cab5f9fd82040fcbf6a4cb0ac276dec6c6aa48f.

Picoquic on Windows

To build Picoquic on Windows, you need to:

Install and build Openssl on your machine
Document the location of the Openssl install in the environment variable OPENSSLDIR (OPENSSL64DIR for the x64 builds)
Clone and compile Picotls, using the Picotls for Windows options
Clone and compile Picoquic, using the Visual Studio 2017 solution picoquic.sln included in the sources.
You can use the unit tests included in the Visual Studio solution to verify the port.

Picoquic on Linux

The build experience on Linux is now much improved, thanks to check-ins from Deb Banerjee and Igor Lubashev.

To build Picoquic on Linux, you need to:

Install and build Openssl on your machine
Clone and compile Picotls, using cmake as explained in the Picotls documentation.
Clone and compile Picoquic:

   cmake .
   make

Run the test program "picoquic_ct" to verify the port.

Picoquic on MacOSX

Thanks to Frederik Deweerdt for ensuring that Picoquic runs on MacOSX. The build steps are the same as for Linux.

Picoquic on FreeBSD

Same build steps as Linux. Picoquic probably also works on other BSD variants, but only FreeBSD has been tested so far.

Developing applications

Sorry, not all that much documentation yet. This will come as we populate the wiki. Your best bet is to look at the demonstration program "picoquicdemo" that is included in the release. The sources are in "picoquicfirst/picoquicdemo.c".

Testing previous versions

The code is constantly updated to track the latest version of the specification. It currently conforms to draft-17, and will only negotiate support for the corresponding version 0xFF000011. The previous version, draft-16, can be tested by downloading from Github the code at the commit 5370eaadbf3e138dc9319a742488edccf40b5a12, dated Wed Dec 19 22:07:48 2018 -0800.

bkchr / picoquic