In-browser discovery of local-network IPFS nodes

[ghost]

FlyWeb provides mDNS-ish announcements and discovery in Firefox. This sounds ideal for WebRTC signaling. Instead of fixed signaling servers, ipfs in a browser tab can announce itself to the local network for signalling. @ipfs/javascript-team where's the caveat, this sounds too good to be true. 😍 And it would make for awesome browser demos. Here's how I cut my DSL cable, and Orbit still works.

• https://flyweb.github.io/
• https://flyweb.github.io/spec/
• https://wiki.mozilla.org/FlyWeb

My Firefox 51 here already seems to support it behind a feature flag.

[dignifiedquire]

We would still need signaling servers for more global connections though, right? But this sounds very intersting if we can use it.

[ghost]

Yeah this would be for local/offline cases

[victorb]

Another discussion about FlyWeb: ipfs/js-ipfs#599

[ghost]

Here's a few words from one of the FlyWeb devs on why it stalled:

16:29 | djvj | well, the maintenance stopped because there were some fires to put out generally in other parts of the codebase.
16:29 | djvj | Basically we came to the conclusion that the best way to push this forward was to go with a simple standalone mobile app (wrapping a WebView) that implements the FlyWeb client functionalithy.
16:29 | djvj | and then grow from there.
16:30 | djvj | But the whole quantum and Firefox desktop browser performance and QA effort came up right about then.
16:30 | djvj | So short answer: other priorities, not enough time to keep it running.
16:30 | djvj | pacer: if you want to do something with it, I'd be stoked.
16:31 | djvj | pacer: the apps (both iOS and Android) are available on our github.
16:31 | djvj | pacer: if you want to talk about what we had planned and why and what the general strategy was, that's cool too
16:32 | djvj | I still think it's a project with great promise, it's just that between work and new fatherhood, I don't have a lot of time to put towards this.

[lidel]

Multicast DNS API for browser extensions is being designed in mozilla/libdweb#7

[daviddias]

That's excellent!! :D

[lidel]

cc ipfs/ipfs-companion#553:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRzyWUXIyeo

[lidel]

Highly relevant:

• The discussion about future of mDNS discovery in IPFS: Future of mDNS discovery libp2p/libp2p#28
  • [RFC] peer discovery with MDNS (Spec PR) [RFC] peer discovery with mDNS libp2p/specs#80

[lidel]

• Old: Compatibility with go-libp2p-mdns landed in feat: compatibility with go-libp2p-mdns libp2p/js-libp2p-mdns#80
• New: First draft of new peer discovery with mDNS spec got merged: [RFC] peer discovery with mDNS libp2p/specs#80
  • See it at https://github.com/libp2p/specs/blob/master/discovery/mdns.md

[lidel]

Chrome 81 introduces the mobile web to NFC with an origin trial:

• https://blog.chromium.org/2020/02/chrome-81-near-field-communications.html
• https://web.dev/nfc