e-ivkov / libp2p-node-example

libp2p rust node example

Libp2p node exmple

Description

Shows libp2p usage scenario as a blockchain node. It is mainly an example to get performance stats of libp2p.

Protocols used

1. ping
2. floodsub (pubsub implementation)
3. mdns (mainly for development purposes, to test faster on local machine)

Stats gathered

The node gathers the following stats in a stats.txt, which it saves on exit.

1. Mean ping time to each peer
2. Mean transmission rate (through floodsub) to each peer measured in bytes per unit of time

All mean stats are gathered with 95% confidence interval. This stats are saved only for the latest N requests, where N is specified as command line argument stats_window_size

What the node does

1. Connects to the swarm on startup
2. Periodically pings other nodes
3. Periodically sends pending_tx to other nodes
4. Logs all the incoming messages
5. Exits after specified time saving the stats to a file

How to deploy

1. Clone the repository
2. cargo run -- --help to get the list of possible parameters
3. cargo run -- --node_addr=ADDR to deploy and connect to the swarm through the node with ADDR address
4. (Optional) Logging can be turned on by setting RUST_LOG=info before starting node. Example: RUST_LOG=info cargo run

Test procedure

As initially this repository is meant as a performance testing example for libp2p, the procedure to test and get results is the following.

All the nodes should be deployed on different machines, preferably in different networks.

1. Deploy the first node and record it's address
2. Deploy other nodes with the first node's address as a cli parameter
3. Wait for the first node to exit (exit time can be also specified in cli args)
4. Retrieve stats.txt from the first node's machine. It should be located near the executable file.

Note: by default each node runs for 1000 seconds.