libp2p / libp2p/research-pubsub
Last Value Cache
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Description
In the search for a solution to Orbits problem of how to know about the current state of a chat when joining, we had the idea of adding a last value cache to the floodsub implementation.
> This [last value caching] solves the problem of how a new subscriber catches up when it joins the network. The theory is that publishers get notified when a new subscriber joins and subscribes to some specific topics. The publisher can then rebroadcast the last message for those topics.
>
> From http://zguide.zeromq.org/php:chapter5#Last-Value-Caching
I have an experimental implementation for js up here: https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p-floodsub/pull/32 which caches the last known message for all known topics currently. This definitely needs some refinements, to avoid things like unlimited memory usage.
My first tests with orbit showed that this does solve the issue of message loading on join, without any changes to the codebase.
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First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by reviewing the experimental JavaScript implementation in libp2p/js-libp2p-floodsub PR #32 and the floodsub behavior described here. Determine how publishers learn about new subscribers and how the last message is cached per topic. Done means new subscribers receive the latest topic message without unbounded memory usage.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- javascript
- Domain
- distributed-systems
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 30/100