Freenet’s request routing mechanism plays a crucial role in the efficiency of the network.
It is responsible for deciding which peer to route a request to when attempting to read, create, or modify a contract’s state. The mechanism is designed to select the peer that can complete the request the fastest, which may not always be the peer closest to the contract’s location - the traditional approach for routing in a small-world network, known as greedy routing.
Note: This document is a work in progress and is subject to change, it is currently out-of-sync with the codebase and should be updated to reflect the current state of the codebase once it has stabilized.
The Freenet Transport Protocol (FrTP) is a UDP-based system designed to ensure reliable and encrypted message transmission. This document outlines the key elements of FrTP, including connection establishment, message handling, and rate limiting.
Freenet is structured as a decentralized peer-to-peer network, based on the idea of a small-world network. This network topology is scalable and efficient, allowing contract state to be found quickly and without any reliance on a central authority.
In Freenet, a “peer” is any computer running the Freenet Core software. The peers are organized in a ring-like structure, with each peer assigned a specific numerical value between 0.0 and 1.0, indicating its location in the network’s topology. This location is derived from the peer’s IP address.