N2R (node-to-relay) protocol

N2R allows communication between any two nodes, as long as one of them is a relay.

Packet format

The packet format is based on the InnerPacket Rust enum:

/// Represents the actual end-to-end packet that is carried in the payloads. Either an application-level message, or a batch of reply blocks.
pub enum InnerPacket {
    /// Normal messages
    Message(Message),
    /// Reply blocks, used to construct relay->anon messages
    ReplyBlocks(Vec<ReplyBlock>),

/// An inner packet message with corresponding UDP port-like source and destinaton docks
pub struct Message {
    pub source_dock: Dock,
    pub dest_dock: Dock,
    pub body: Vec<Bytes>,
}

pub type Dock = u32;

An InnerPacket is stuffed into the 8192-byte payload by this process:

  1. First, we encode the packet using bincode, getting box_plaintext.

  2. We then box-encrypt using an ephemeral keypair, whose public half is box_epk, getting box_ciphertext.

  3. We sign box_epk with our identity secret key identity_sk, whose public half is identity_pk, producing identity_signature

  4. We then package everything into a tuple (identity_pk, identity_signature, box_ciphertext), bincode it, and pad it to 8192 bytes.

This picture roughly illustrates the structure of a fully encoded InnerPacket that stores a normal Message.

Socket abstraction

The typical interface exposed by N2R is not raw functions for sending and receiving packets. Instead, we use a socket abstraction inspired by UDP. Each socket represents an Endpoint, a local fingerprint:dock pair, that can receive and send messages. More specifically:

  • The user constructs a socket by binding to an identity and a dock number.

    • This identity can either be the long-term identity of the node, or a temporary anonymous identity.

  • The socket has a method to send a message to a fingerprint and dock number.

    • This formats a message with:

      • source identity public key and source dock number taken from the identity and dock number of the socket

      • destination identity looked up by fingerprint

    • If the socket is bound to a temporary identity, reply blocks must be sent to the destination fingerprint as well so that they can talk back to us.

  • There's also a receive method, which returns a message and a source endpoint, which consists of a fingerprint and a dock number.

    • This blocks until there is an incoming message addressed to the identity and dock number that the socket is bound to.

    • In the implementation, there must be some sort of demultiplexing done to separate incoming messages addressed to different sockets.

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