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Decentralized Bootstrapping for WebRTC-based P2P Networks

Authors:
Dennis Boldt
Kaminski Felix
Stefan Fischer

Keywords: Peer-to-Peer; Decentralized; Bootstrapping; WebRTC; Chord; DNS

Abstract:
Around the millennium, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks were standalone applications, where users had to configure their firewalls properly to be able to connect to the network. Nowadays, P2P connections between browsers are possible without the need for any user-side configuration. This can be achieved with the Web Real-Time Communication protocol stack (WebRTC). Recent research showed that WebRTC-based peer-to-peer networks can work as a decentralized, redundant and encrypted storage for user data. However, all existing networks employ a centralized bootstrapping infrastructure, which still is a single point of failure. In this paper, we present a decentralized architecture to handle bootstrapping for a WebRTC-based peer-to-peer network, completely removing the need for a central instance. The architecture uses the highly decentralized Domain Name System (DNS), combined with so-called Master-Peers. Our evaluation shows that the architecture scales well and reduces the bootstrapping time remarkably.

Pages: 17 to 23

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2017

Publication date: May 21, 2017

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4421

ISBN: 978-1-61208-557-9

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from May 21, 2017 to May 25, 2017