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Block Exchange Protocol v1.0

Introduction and Definitions

The BEP is used between two or more nodes thus forming a cluster. Each node has a repository of files described by the local model, containing modifications times and block hashes. The local model is sent to the other nodes in the cluster. The union of all files in the local models, with files selected for most recent modification time, forms the global model. Each node strives to get it's repository in synch with the global model by requesting missing blocks from the other nodes.

Transport and Authentication

The BEP itself does not provide retransmissions, compression, encryption nor authentication. It is expected that this is performed at lower layers of the networking stack. A typical deployment stack should be similar to the following:

|-----------------------------|
|   Block Exchange Protocol   |
|-----------------------------|
|   Compression (RFC 1951)    |
|-----------------------------|
| Encryption & Auth (TLS 1.0) |
|-----------------------------|
|             TCP             |
|-----------------------------|
v                             v

The exact nature of the authentication is up to the application. Possibilities include certificates signed by a common trusted CA, preshared certificates, preshared certificate fingerprints or certificate pinning combined with some out of band first verification.

There is no required order or synchronization among BEP messages - any message type may be sent at any time and the sender need not await a response to one message before sending another. Responses must however be sent in the same order as the requests are received.

Compression is started directly after a successfull TLS handshake, before the first message is sent. The compression is flushed at each message boundary.

Messages

Every message starts with one 32 bit word indicating the message version and type. For BEP v1.0 the Version field is set to zero. Future versions with incompatible message formats will increment the Version field. The reserved bits must be set to zero.

 0                   1                   2                   3
 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Ver=0 |       Message ID      |     Type      |    Reserved   |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

All data following the message header is in XDR (RFC 1014) encoding. The actual data types in use by BEP, in XDR naming convention, are:

unsigned int -- unsigned 32 bit integer
hyper -- signed 64 bit integer
unsigned hyper -- signed 64 bit integer
opaque<> -- variable length opaque data
string<> -- variable length string

The encoding of opaque<> and string<> are identical, the distinction is solely in interpretation. Opaque data should not be interpreted as such, but can be compared bytewise to other opaque data. All strings use the UTF-8 encoding.

Index (Type = 1)

The Index message defines the contents of the senders repository. A Index message is sent by each peer immediately upon connection and whenever the local repository contents changes. However, if a peer has no data to advertise (the repository is empty, or it is set to only import data) it is allowed but not required to send an empty Index message (a file list of zero length). If the repository contents change from non-empty to empty, an empty Index message must be sent. There is no response to the Index message.

struct IndexMessage {
    FileInfo Files<>;
}

struct FileInfo {
    string Name<>;
    unsigned int Flags;
    hyper Modified;
    BlockInfo Blocks<>;
}

struct BlockInfo {
    unsigned int Length;
    opaque Hash<>
}

The file name is the part relative to the repository root. The modification time is expressed as the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch. The hash algorithm is implied by the hash length. Currently, the hash must be 32 bytes long and computed by SHA256.

The flags field is made up of the following single bit flags:

 0                   1                   2                   3
 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
|              Reserved               |D|   Unix Perm. & Mode   |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

The lower 12 bits hold the common Unix permission and mode bits.
Bit 19 ("D") is set when the file has been deleted. The block list shall contain zero blocks and the modification time indicates the time of deletion or, if deletion time is not reliably determinable, one second past the last know modification time.
Bit 0 through 18 are reserved for future use and shall be set to zero.

Request (Type = 2)

The Request message expresses the desire to receive a data block corresponding to a part of a certain file in the peer's repository.

The requested block must correspond exactly to one block seen in the peer's Index message. The hash field must be set to the expected value by the sender. The receiver may validate that this is actually the case before transmitting data. Each Request message must be met with a Response message.

struct RequestMessage {
    string Name<>;
    unsigned hyper Offset;
    unsigned int Length;
    opaque Hash<>;
}

The hash algorithm is implied by the hash length. Currently, the hash must be 32 bytes long and computed by SHA256.

The Message ID in the header must set to a unique value to be able to correlate the request with the response message.

Response (Type = 3)

The Response message is sent in response to a Request message. In case the requested data was not available (an outdated block was requested, or the file has been deleted), the Data field is empty.

struct ResponseMessage {
    opaque Data<>
}

The Message ID in the header is used to correlate requests and responses.

Ping (Type = 4)

The Ping message is used to determine that a connection is alive, and to keep connections alive through state tracking network elements such as firewalls and NAT gateways. The Ping message has no contents.

struct PingMessage {
}

Pong (Type = 5)

The Pong message is sent in response to a Ping. The Pong message has no contents, but copies the Message ID from the Ping.

struct PongMessage {
}

Example Exchange

      A            B
 1. Index->      <-Index
 2. Request->
 3. Request->
 4. Request->
 5. Request->
 6.         <-Response
 7.         <-Response
 8.         <-Response
 9.         <-Response
10. Index->
    ...
11. Ping->
12.            <-Pong

The connection is established and at 1. both peers send Index records. The Index records are received and both peers recompute their knowledge of the data in the cluster. In this example, peer A has four missing or outdated blocks. At 2 through 5 peer A sends requests for these blocks. The requests are received by peer B, who retrieves the data from the repository and transmits Response records (6 through 9). Node A updates their repository contents and transmits an updated Index message (10). Both peers enter idle state after 10. At some later time 11, peer A determines that it has not seen data from B for some time and sends a Ping request. A response is sent at 12.

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