PeerConnect

A P2P CDN Implementation

About

PeerConnect is a proof of concept that aims to serve static assets (videos/images) over a peer to peer delivery network powered by WebRTC (images), WebTorrent (videos), and WebSockets (signaling)

Images

PeerConnect uses WebRTC for image P2P transfers. By using websockets, we are able to coordinate data-channel connections between two different peers. If no available peers are present, images are loaded from the server. Once a peer finishes downloading, they become an initiator for future P2P data transfers.

Video

PeerConnect uses WebTorrent and torrenting protocols for video P2P transfers. By utilizing the server as a webseed for videos, as more and more individuals visit the site, video streams will get progressively stronger and rely less on the initial webseed hosted on the server.

Usage

Using PeerConnect requires a script on the client end and initiation on the server.

Setup

npm install --save peer-connect-client peer-connect-server

Client

If using a file bundler e.g. (browserify), you can require it in your script file.

const PeerConnectClient = require('peer-connect-client');
PeerConnectClient();

If you want to use the module without bundling, it is currently being hosted on unpkg CDN. Use it as a script in your html file.

https://unpkg.com/peer-connect-client@0.1.3/peer-connect-client.min.js

You will need to bring in socket.io as a script in your html file.

<script src="/socket.io/socket.io.js"></script>

Server

PeerConnect utilizes Express and socket.io to coordinate WebRTC connections. In addition, in order to create webseeds, we create routes serving the video files.

To use it, require PeerConnectServer from our package and pass in the Node Server instance you're using along with your PeerConnectServer configurations. In Express, you can get this instance by calling app.listen.

Here's how you would use it in your server:

const PeerConnectServer = require('peer-connect-server');
const server = app.listen(8000);

//to allow cross origin resource sharing
app.use((req, res, next) => {
  res.header("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*");
  res.header(
    "Access-Control-Allow-Headers",
    "Origin, X-Requested-With, Content-Type, Accept"
  );
  next();
});

PeerConnectServer(server, app, [opts]);

Example

Set src attributes in a data-src attribute for assets!

<video data-src="../assets/videos/yosemite-hd.mp4" controls src=""></video>
  <div class="image-container-inner">
    <img data-src="../assets/image1.jpg">
    <img data-src="../assets/image2.png">
  </div>

Configuration

It's easy to incorporate PeerConnectServer. Just provide us with a few details on your peerConfig object and we'll do the rest! If opts is specified to PeerConnectServer, it will override the default options (shown below).

threshold - An integer threshold value to determine when to turn on P2P image sharing e.g. if threshold = 3, fourth client will load from peers
peerImages - A boolean that determines whether to load images P2P
peerVideos - A boolean that determines whether to load videos P2P
excludeFormats - An array of string(s) that say which file formats to exclude from peers
foldLoading - A boolean that determines whether to load images above the fold from the server if true
geoLocate - A boolean that either uses geolocation to pair the closest peers or not
videoRoute - The path to all of your video assets
torrentRoute - The path where a new folder holding all of your torrent files will be created
domainName - Your website url

{
  threshold: Integer             // 3
  peerImages: Boolean            // true
  peerVideos: Boolean            // true
  excludeFormats: [Strings]      // ['gif']
  foldLoading: Boolean           // false
  geoLocate: Boolean             // true
  videoRoute: String             // './assets/videos'
  torrentRoute: String           // './assets'
  domainName: String             // 'https://peerconnect.io'
}

Contributing

To contribute to PeerConnect, fork the repository and clone it to your machine then install dependencies with npm install. If you're interested in joining the Peer Connect team as a contributor, feel free to message one of us directly!

Authors

Justin Ko (https://github.com/justinko43)
Mike Gutierrez (https://github.com/mikegutierrez)
Peter Lee (https://github.com/wasafune)
Jim Kang (https://github.com/jiminykbob)

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details

PeerConnect/peer-connect