mldht

A java library and standalone node implementing the Kademlia-based bittorrent mainline DHT, with long-running server-class nodes in mind.

Originally developed as DHT plugin for Azureus/Vuze

Features

Implemented specs:

Spec	Title	Status
BEP5	Bittorrent DHT	Yes
BEP32	IPv6	Yes
BEP33	Scrapes	Yes
BEP42	DHT Announce Security	Partial; only the ip fields for external address discovery are supported
BEP9	Metadata exchange	Partial; only fetching is supported
libtorrent.org	Extended get_peers response Forward compatibility Client identification	Yes
BEP45	multi-homing/multi-address mode	Yes
BEP44	Arbitrary data storage	Yes
BEP50	Pub/Sub	No
BEP51	DHT Infohash Indexing	Yes

Additional:

• high-performance implementation without compromising correctness, i.e. the node will be a good citizen
• can process 20k packets per second on a single Xeon core
• low latency lookups by using adaptive timeouts and a secondary routing table/cache tuned for RTT instead of stability
• export of passively observed <infohash, ip> tuples to redis to survey torrent activity
• remote CLI for common DHT operations
• full automatic torrent indexing (active and passive dht indexing + metadata exchange)

Dependencies

• java ≥ 8
• maven 3.1 (building)

installed via maven:

• ed25519-java
• junit 4.x (tests)

build

git clone https://github.com/the8472/mldht.git .
mvn package dependency:copy-dependencies appassembler:assemble
# install symlink scripts to ~/bin/ 
mvn antrun:run@link

embedding as library

See docs/use-as-library.md for further information. Maven repos are linked in the badges.

run in standalone mode

mkdir -p work
cd work
../bin/mldht-daemon
# or manually
# java -cp "../target/*:../target/dependency/*" the8472.mldht.Launcher &

this will create various files in the current working directory

• config.xml, change settings as needed, core settings will be picked up on file modification
• shutdown, touch to cleanly shutdown running process (SIGHUP works too)
• *-table.cache, persisted routing table for the ipv4/6 dhts, respectively
• baseID.config, persisted node ID
• logs/*, various diagnostics and log files
• .keys/, default storage directory for BEP44 private keys. used by the CLI

Security note: the shell script launches the JVM with a debug port bound to localhost for easier maintenance, thus allowing arbitrary code execution with the current user's permissions. In a multi-user environment a custom script with debugging disabled should be used

network configuration

• stateful NATs or firewalls should be put into stateless mode/disable connection tracking and use static forwarding rules for the configured local ports [default: 49001].
  Otherwise state table overflows may occur which lead to dropped packets and degraded performance.
• nat/firewall rules should not assume any particular remote port, as other DHT nodes are free to chose their own.
• If no publicly routable IPv6 address is available then IPv6 should be disabled
• If only NATed IPv4 addresses are available then multihoming mode should be disabled
• The length of network interface send queues should be increased when the DHT node is operated in multihoming mode on a server with many public IPs.
  This is necessary because UDP sends may be silently dropped when the send queue is full and DHT traffic can be very bursty, easily saturating too-small queues
  Check system logs or netstat statistics to see if outgoing packets are dropped.
• For similar reasons the maximum socket receive buffer size should be set to at least 2MB, which is the amount this implementation will request when configuring its sockets

optional components

Some features are not enabled out of the box because they only require external infrastructure, provide public services or would cause extra traffic.

They are enabled by adding or uncommenting a <component><className>...</className></component> entry to the config.xml

• the8472.mldht.cli.Server to enable the remote CLI
• the8472.mldht.indexing.TorrentDumper obtains infohashes from incoming traffic, then does all the necessary work to fetch them. can acquire approximately 0.3 torrents per second on a single-homed setup without firewall.
• the8472.mldht.indexing.ActiveLookupProvider raw TCP interface for requesting DHT scrapes on port 36578. just send infohashes in hex, newline separated
• the8472.mldht.indexing.OpentrackerLiveSync implements a lan-local multicast sender for opentracker's IPv4 live sync. for passively observed DHT lookups will be inserted as peers in opentracker instance. opentracker instance can then be used as source for DHT statistics as if it were just another tracker
• the8472.mldht.PassiveRedisIndexer obtains statistics on peers seen on particular infohashes

remote-cli

launch daemon with

    <component>
      <className>the8472.mldht.cli.Server</className>
    </component>

run CLI client with

bin/mldht-remote-cli help
# or manually:
# java -cp "target/*" the8472.mldht.cli.Client help

available commands (subject to change):

HELP                                                 - prints this help
PING ip port                                         - continuously pings a DHT node with a 1 second interval
GET hash [salt]                                      - perform a BEP44 get
PUT -f <input-path> [-keyfile <path>] [-salt <salt>]
PUT <input> [-keyfile <path>] [-salt <salt>]         - perform a BEP44 put, specifying a salt or keyfile implies a mutable put, immutable otherwise. data will be read from file or as single argument
GETTORRENT [infohash...]                             - peer lookup for <infohash(es)>, then attempt metadata exchange, then write .torrent file(s) to the current working directory
GETPEERS [infohash...] [-fast]                       - peer lookup for <infohash(es)>, print ip address/port tuples
BURST [count]                                        - run a batch of find_node lookups to random target IDs. intended test the attainable throughput for active lookups, subject to internal throttling

Security note: The CLI Server component listens on localhost, accepting commands without authentication from any user on the system. It is recommended to not use this component in a multi-user environment.

redis statistics export

    <component xsi:type="mldht:redisIndexerType">
      <className>the8472.mldht.PassiveRedisIndexer</className>
      <address>127.0.0.1</address><!-- additional parameter to allow exporting to other hosts -->
    </component>

custom components

Simply implement Component and configure the launcher to include it on startup through the config.xml:

    <component>
      <className>your.class.name.Here</className>
    </component>