bonifatius94/chord.lib

Little fun implementation of the Chord protocol

chord.lib's Issues

Add Exception Handling (Timeouts, ...)

Issue:

• the current implementation has no try/catch blocks -> crash on timeout, etc.
• concurrent operations open a whole new field of error cases to be dealt with

Suggested Solution:

• figure out common error cases and handle them properly (e.g. surround each request with try/catch) -> harden the service
• think of all kinds of concurrency issues like raise conditions, etc. and address them properly
• apply common sense networking techniques like exponential backoff to reduce latency and maximize throughput
• add unit tests / component tests simulating each of those error cases (or at least the most important ones)

Fix Initialization Process

Issue

• nodes seem to challenge each other during network simulation tests
• possible reason: there's no jitter, exponential backoff mechanism, etc.

Solution

• try adding jitter and exponential backoff to decouple concurrent initialization procedures
• extend the tests to figure out what the cause of the issue is

Add Unit / Component / System Tests

Tasks:

• unit tests: back up all critical Chord.Lib API functionality
• component tests: make sure all Chord node endpoints work properly
• system tests: launch a little docker-compose deployment simulating real network communication between Chord nodes

Design Chord Network Protocol

Tasks:

• define message datagrams for:
  • key lookup
  • node join (initiate / finalize phases)
  • node leave (initiate / finalize phases)
  • node health-check
• define node health statuses as:
  • starting
  • idle
  • stopping
  • questionable
  • dead
• make sure that the 4 elementary operations suffice

Add GitHub CI/CD Workflows

Tasks:

• CI:
  • add a Chord.Lib build pipeline
  • run all Chord.Lib unit tests
  • deploy the Chord.Lib to a dockerized Chord node image
  • run all component and system tests
• CD:
  • release the Chord.Lib as DLL
  • release the Chord.Lib as Docker image (optional)

Implement Chord Core API

Tasks:

• create a node class exposing all Chord functionality
  • node join
  • node leave
  • node health-check
  • key lookup
  • update successor
• implement the message exchange using callback functions such that the actual networking layer is abstracted from the logical Chord functionality layer

Try Docker Layer Caching via GitHub Actions

Implement Chord Network Endpoint

Tasks:

• create an ASP.NET controller serving requests:
  • process requests from other nodes by handing them over to the logical Chord API
  • send messages to other Chord endpoints
  • think of using the same message format for all requests
• handle Chord network initialization:
  • provide a reasonable bootstrapping function to enter the network (e.g. node with smallest IP address, having a dockerized VLAN in mind)
  • make the Chord node itself run the Chord join procedure on node startup

Port the Project to .NET 5

• make the project compatible to Linux ASP.NET Core 5