blob: 33f6333b316c6fcf714be5143c27e289ec8020d5 (
plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
|
---
title: "Overview"
linkTitle: "Overview"
date: 2019-10-21
weight: 10
description: >
A bird's eye view of Ouroboros.
---
{{% pageinfo %}}
Under construction.
{{% /pageinfo %}}
Ouroboros is a (prototype) **distributed system** for packet network
communications. It consists of a C **library** that allows you
to write ouroboros-native programs and the subsystem that consists of
a bunch of **daemons** that allow you to easily create your own
(overlay) networks using ordinary PC hardware (Linux, FreeBSD or MacOS
X).
The **Ouroboros library** implements the **application API** (the
Ouroboros alternative to POSIX sockets) and the **management API**
(the Ouroboros alternative to things like netlink sockets).
{{<figure width="60%" src="/docs/overview/intro.jpg">}}
From an application perspective, all that's needed is to link your
application with Ouroboros and you can use the Ouroboros networking
primitives.
All **end-to-end transport functions** are implemented in the
application library, such as **reliability** (packet ordering,
retransmission logic etc) and transport **encryption**.
The Ouroboros daemons can be thought of as **software routers** that
can be connected to each other. Each one has an address,
and they forward packets among each other. The daemons also implement
a Distributed Hash Table, so the network has its own internal
name-to-address resolution.
|
