@xmbl/networking

The P2P layer: libp2p, wrapped as XNNode. TCP and WebSockets (including the wss + /http-path form that is the only way through a box where just 443 is open), noise + yamux, floodsub, circuit relay v2 with self-election, and Kademlia DHT peer discovery.

npm install @xmbl/networking

Discovery is WAN-capable — that is a gate, not a detail

Until 0.1.17 this package configured peerDiscovery: [mdns()] and nothing else. mDNS is LAN multicast: it cannot cross the internet, so every cross-network peer came from one hardcoded seed multiaddr while kadDHT sat imported and never called. When that seed moved, the whole fleet partitioned and nothing went red — the boxes stayed up, kept beaconing and kept serving. A star topology cannot report its own partition.

Now:

services.dht = kadDHT({
  protocol: '/xmbl/kad/1.0.0',        // the mesh's own keyspace, NOT the public IPFS DHT
  clientMode: false,                  // a mesh of DHT clients is as unfindable as no DHT
  peerInfoMapper: passthroughMapper,  // most of this mesh is reachable only at a /p2p-circuit addr
})

libp2p registers it as a discovery source through the peer-discovery symbol it exposes. mDNS stays — LAN discovery was never the bug, being LAN-only was.

wan-discovery.test.mjs asserts it on a started node, because a check for the import passes even when nothing is wired, and ends on the outcome: three nodes, two of which know only the seed, and one resolves the other through peerRouting.findPeer — a query over /xmbl/kad/1.0.0 answered from the seed's routing table. mDNS implements no peer routing, so it cannot be what satisfies that. 1/5 against 0.1.16 (the outcome check fails with "No peer routers available"), 5/5 after.

⚠ What this does not yet establish: clientMode: false means libp2p promotes a node to DHT server once it has a publicly dialable address, and on this mesh the seed may be the only box that does. Measured only on loopback so far, where all three nodes promoted. Until the share of prod boxes in server mode is counted, "peers find each other without the seed" is the design, not a measurement — the seed may still be the hinge, one layer up.

What it owns

| Export | What it is | |---|---| | XNNode | The node. Announce addresses, circuit-relay reservations on the seeds, DHT + mDNS discovery, and auto-dial on discovery (discovery emits, it does not connect). | | PeerDiscovery | Bootstrap as a standing intent: keeps seeds connected with backoff, says what happened, and never dials itself. | | ConnectionManager | Enforces the connection cap — a flood cannot exceed maxConnections. | | MessageRouter | Deny-by-default: an unknown or forged message type invokes no handler, it throws. | | PubSubManager | Topic pub/sub over floodsub. | | loadOrCreatePeerKey | A stable peer id across restarts. |

GossipManager and the webtorrent dependency were removed at 0.1.17. It was a second, eager WebTorrent client that nothing had ever constructed, while the swarm path that actually runs is ConsensusGossip in @xmbl/consensus, built by @xmbl/core and loading webtorrent lazily. A duplicate alive only in its own test reads like a capability — the same defect as the imported-and-never-called DHT it sat beside.

Relay self-election

A box that announces or listens on a public address is the dialable box, so it elects itself as the relay server; XMBL_RELAY_SERVER=1/0 forces the two cases this code cannot see. A control whose default is "off everywhere" is not a control.

Tests

node ../../scripts/run-node-tests.mjs .