Testing BitTorrent and IPFS

[PHILIP CUMMINS]

Hello, i’ve tried to find some information on restrictions around what software can be tested, but i haven’t found any information related to IPFS or BitTorrent.

I am hoping to test peer discovery and data transfer between Fabric nodes. It is not required (indeed, preferred) for either of these pieces of software to connect to resources outside of Fabric.

I just thought i’d ask here before starting the experiment, please let me know your thoughts!

Thanks,

[Komal Thareja]

Thank you for your inquiry Philip.

You are welcome to conduct experiments involving IPFS or BitTorrent on FABRIC, particularly for evaluating peer discovery and data transfer between FABRIC nodes. This type of testing is permissible as long as it is confined to FABnet or a custom Layer 2 network within the FABRIC infrastructure.

We kindly request that your experiment not initiate connections to external BitTorrent or IPFS servers outside the FABRIC environment.

Please feel free to reach out if you need any assistance with the experiment setup or have further questions.

Best regards,

Komal

[PHILIP CUMMINS]

hi Komal, thanks for the information,

I understand from reading about network services that FABNetv4 is “An IPv4 service with RFC1918 addressing which can connect any number of interfaces across any number of sites. Communication with the outside world (public Internet) is not possible.”

is this used when executing node.add_fabnet() in the Fabric hosted Jupyter notebook?

I can see that FABNetv4Ext can communicate with the outside world, is this the default when executing node.add_fabnet()?

The reason I ask, I am sorry to report is that I can see on start up IPFS opening what look like connections with the outside world. I stop the docker container without interacting with the network. I can lock down the connections using a swarm key, but this results in double encryption which may affect the testing I am doing.

Overall though I am really excited with the experience of using the fabric testbed, and just wanted to say good job!

[PHILIP CUMMINS]

and if the devices are not able to communicate with the outside world then the same probably goes for pulling images from docker hub, installing with apt…

maybe an FAQ section here could be very useful: https://learn.fabric-testbed.net/knowledge-base/network-services-in-fabric/

thanks,

[Komal Thareja]

Thank you for your feedback, Philip!

You’re absolutely right—node.add_fabnet() attaches the FabNetV4 service to the node, enabling communication with other nodes over FABRIC’s data plane network via the FabNetV4 interface.

In addition, all VMs provisioned in FABRIC are assigned a Management IP for administrative purposes. This interface allows inbound SSH access and supports outbound connections, including those required for operations like docker pull. However, please note that the management network is actively monitored and any torrent or insecure traffic may be flagged. Such activity can lead to enforcement actions, including possible slice termination. As a best practice, we recommend not using the management network for experimental traffic.

Best,

Komal

[PHILIP CUMMINS]

if it helps anyone from the future:

– I am removing the bootstrap nodes before starting IPFS daemon

– I am adding only the enp7s0 internal interface IP address to the announce list

It should work exactly as you expect, once i’ve progressed a little further i’ll try to remember to update this with a link to the jupyter notebook to get the code

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