blob: b5faa459e8ce3623c41276c9a14f393bd0c3be02 (
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
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
|
---
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.
The best place to start understanding a bit what Ouroboros aims to do
and how it differs from other packet networks is to first watch this
presentation at [FOSDEM 2018](https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/ipc/), and have a
quick read of the [flow allocation](/docs/concepts/fa/) and [data
path](/docs/concepts/datapath/) sections.
{{< youtube 6fH23l45984 >}}
For more depth, our article on the design of Ouroboros is accessible on [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.09707.pdf).
|
