Ouroboros Prototype

The Ouroboros prototype is a user-space packet network implementation based on the networking model of the same name. It is being developed in C for POSIX operating systems. This prototype is still a work in progress.

Prototype summary

Split in library

Requirements

Ouroboros builds on most POSIX compliant systems. Below you will find instructions for GNU/Linux, FreeBSD and OS X. On Windows 10, you can build Ouroboros using the Linux Subsystem for Windows .

Get Ouroboros

You can clone Ouroboros using the command line from its website or, if you prefer you can clone and/or fork from our Github or BitBucket mirrors.

$ git clone https://ouroboros.rocks/git/ouroboros
$ git clone git://ouroboros.rocks/ouroboros
$ git clone https://github.com/dstaesse/ouroboros

Optional repositories are pyOuroboros, a Python wrapper to write Ouroboros programs in Python, and ouroboros-metrics that contains an InfluxDB exporter.

Dependencies

To build Ouroboros, you need cmake, google protocol buffers installed in addition to a C compiler (gcc or clang) and make.

On GNU/Linux you will need either libgcrypt (≥ 1.7.0) or libssl if your glibc is older than version 2.25.

On OS X, you will need homebrew. Disable System Integrity Protection during the installation and/or removal of Ouroboros.

Optionally, you can also install libgcrypt, libssl (to enable encryption), fuse (to enable exporting internal metrics), and dnsutils (to enable use of a DynDNS server to be used as a naming directory for a UDP layer). Setting up a DNS server (e.g. bind) is out of scope of this installation guide.

Debian/Ubuntu Linux

$ apt-get install git protobuf-c-compiler cmake
$ apt-get install libgcrypt20-dev libssl-dev libfuse-dev dnsutils cmake-curses-gui

If during the build process cmake complains that the Protobuf C compiler is required but not found, and you installed the protobuf-c-compiler package, you will also need this:

$ apt-get install libprotobuf-c-dev

Arch Linux

$ pacman -S git protobuf-c cmake
$ pacman -S libgcrypt openssl fuse dnsutils

FreeBSD 11/12

$ pkg install git protobuf-c cmake
$ pkg install libgcrypt openssl fusefs-libs bind-tools

Mac OS X 10/11/12

$ brew install git protobuf-c cmake
$ brew install libgcrypt openssl

Installation instructions

When installing from source, go to the cloned git repository or extract the tarball and enter the main directory. We recommend creating a build directory inside this directory. Run cmake providing the path to where you cloned the Ouroboros repository. Assuming you created the build directory inside the repository directory, the following commands build and install O7s:

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake ..
$ sudo make install

Remove Ouroboros

To uninstall Ouroboros, simply execute the following command from your build directory:

$ sudo make uninstall

Build configuration parameters

At compile time, there are a number of parameters that can be tweaked, for instance to increase performance or decrease memory consumption.

These parameters can be enabled by specifying them to cmake

$ cmake -D<option>=<value> ..

or interactively by running ccmake . in the build directory.

Ouroboros build configuration

Parameter	Description	Values	Default
ACK_WHEEL_RESOLUTION	Minimum acknowledgment delay (ns), as a power to 2		18
ACK_WHEEL_SLOTS	Number of slots in the acknowledgment wheel, must be a power of 2		256
BOOTSTRAP_TIMEOUT	Timeout for an IPCP to bootstrap (ms)		5000
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE	Build type	Release: A release build, less debug logs, compiled with performance flags Debug: A debug build with extra logging and debug symbols (gdb) DebugASan: Enables Address Sanitizer DebugTSan: Enables Thread Sanitizer DebugLSan: Enables Leak Sanitizer DebugUSan: Enables Undefined behaviour Sanitizer DebugAnalyzer: Enables static analysis during compilation	Release
			/usr (Linux, *BSD) /usr/local (OS X)
CONNECT_TIMEOUT	Timeout to connect an IPCP to another IPCP (ms)		60000
DELTA_T_ACK			10
DELTA_T_MPL			60
DELTA_T_RTX			120
DHT_ENROLL_SLACK 50 DISABLE_CORE_LOCK ON DISABLE_DDNS OFF DISABLE_FUSE OFF DISABLE_LIBGCRYPT OFF DISABLE_OPENSSL OFF DISABLE_RAW_SOCKETS OFF DISABLE_ROBUST_MUTEXES OFF DU_BUFF_HEADSPACE 256 DU_BUFF_TAILSPACE 32 ENROLL_TIMEOUT 60000 FRCT_LINUX_RTT_ESTIMATOR ON FRCT_REORDER_QUEUE_SIZE 256 FRCT_RTO_INC_FACTOR 0 FRCT_RTO_MDEV_MULTIPLIER 2 FRCT_RTO_MIN 250 FRCT_START_WINDOW 64 FRCT_TICK_TIME 5000 FUSE_PREFIX /tmp/ouroboros IPCP_ADD_THREADS 4 IPCP_BROADCAST_MPL 60 IPCP_CONN_WAIT_DIR ON IPCP_ETH_LO_MTU 1500 IPCP_ETH_MPL 5 IPCP_ETH_QDISC_BYPASS OFF IPCP_ETH_RD_THR 1 IPCP_ETH_WR_THR 1 IPCP_FLOW_STATS ON IPCP_LINUX_TIMERSLACK_NS 1000 IPCP_LOCAL_MPL 2 IPCP_MIN_THREADS 4 IPCP_QOS_CUBE_BE_PRIO 50 IPCP_QOS_CUBE_VIDEO_PRIO 90 IPCP_QOS_CUBE_VOICE_PRIO 99 IPCP_SCHED_THR_MUL 2 IPCP_UDP_MPL 60	...