Distributed Hash-table

Description

Distributed hash-table, or DHT, provides an interface close to associative array or dictionary with key/value pair where storage of all pairs (key, value) is distributed into multiple nodes.

Because of such useful DHT’s characteristics as decentralization, scalability and fault-tolerance it is possible to create an integrated space for service information storage. This means switching to an absolutely different approach since it moves towards an organization of network infrastructures rather than a common centralized client-server solutions.

Each computer running the BitDust program can be a node in the DHT network and stores key/value pairs created by other users.

The BitDust software runs a DHT network based on the implementation from the Entangled library – its source code is included in the source code of BitDust and is distributed together.

Data types

Each user node uses different types of service data to interact with other computers in the network. Integrated space lets other users request any key/value pairs, which were previously written by the user in the DHT network, and get actual service information.

The following table has a list of command boxes, which can be written to the hash-table by each node:

• [IDURL] user identity file source

• [username]@[id-server]:address external net address in [IP]:[PORT] format for receiving incoming connections

• [username]@[id-server]:incoming list of nodes trying to connect to the user at a given moment

• customer_supplier:[index]:[prefix]:[version] list of relations for given customer with other suppliers

Support BitDust network

If you agree to support other BitDust users when they are connecting to the network and would like to become a "Seed node" in the BitDust network you can add your node to the default_network.json file which is located in the root of the BitDust repository.

Make sure BitDust is running constantly on your machine and it works reliable and connected to the Internet. You will be a part of the BitDust "proto-network" and receive incoming DHT requests from other nodes when they are connecting to the network for the first time.

This is how the Distributed Hash Table works - it is well-scalable, but requires some of the nodes to be on-line all the time. But it shouldn't create a lot of traffic on those nodes because any other node will hit a "seed node" only once - when they are joining DHT network for the first time.

To include yourself into a list of "well-known" seed nodes - first create a fork of Public Git Repository, modify default_network.json file in your forked repository and start a Pull Request with your changes - this way we can collaborate all together and maintain a list of the most reliable BitDust seed nodes.

Contact the BitDust contributors to notify about that a new DHT node was started by you and one of the developers will approve your Pull Request.