libp2p / libp2p/specs

Proposal: dynamically limit the number of streams per protocol

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#520 2 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Description

Some of the protocols running on top of libp2p consume streams greedily, opening as many streams as they can get their hands on.

We now have resource managers in all libp2p implementations that prevent this from becoming a DoS attack, however, when the resource manager kicks in, all that the peer learns is that the stream was reset. This can happen for any number of reasons, so it's really hard to programmatically react to stream resets.

Once we have error code (#479) and HTTP (#508) we can be a lot smarter. By using the 429 HTTP status code (and an equivalent that we define as a stream error code), we can tell the peer that it is (temporarily) overloading us with requests, allowing it to take action (e.g. slow down, wait until a few in-flight requests have finished, etc.).

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reviewing the error-code proposal in #479 and HTTP support in #508, then define how resource-manager rejections should be represented for streams and protocols. Done means the specification clearly defines the 429-equivalent behavior and how peers should react to temporary overload.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
distributed-systems, networking
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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