How to handle High latency networks with go-libp2p?

[GeorgePapageorgakis]

Hello, I am trying to use go libp2p to connect with other nodes in a network that has more than 3 seconds latency. I am using open WRT with Traffic Control to add latency.

However, I get the following error:

E * [/ip4/192.168.4.2/tcp/4001] failed to negotiate security protocol: context deadline exceeded

I have tried some of the following:

	dialTimeout := 6 * time.Second // have also tried 10 minutes...
	// Create a new libp2p host/node in the network
	h, err = libp2p.New(
		libp2p.ListenAddrStrings(listenAddress, bootstrapListenAddress), identity,
		libp2p.ResourceManager(rmgr),
		libp2p.WithDialTimeout(dialTimeout), // did not help
		libp2p.SwarmOpts(swarm.WithDialRanker(swarm.NoDelayDialRanker)), // did not help
	)

In some cases I will just get all dials failed and dial back off errors. Also sometimes I get all dials failed i/o timeout.

Is this a bug, a feature by design or am I missing something?
Is there an option that can help p2p network play with high latency?

[MarcoPolo]

What's the RTT latency? There are a lot of hardcoded timeout assumptions right now. And some protocol negotiations take multiple round trips, so that could cause a high RTT to get multiplied and hit the timeout.

The "failed to negotiate security protocol" likely means you timed out when doing the Noise or TLS handshake. If you set GOLOG_LOG_LEVEL=debug you'll probably see exactly where that happens.

Is this a bug, a feature by design or am I missing something?

For most people this is a feature. Using large timeouts opens you up to Slowloris style attacks.

Is there an option that can help p2p network play with high latency?

Maybe. There's a NegotiationTimeout in the HostOpts struct, but it requires building the host a bit more manually. We could have an option similar to libp2p.WithDialTimeout that would make this easier.

What's your use case here?

[Jorropo]

I'm just curious, is there a real world connections you want to use with 3s of latency ?
In my limited experience very long RTTs also have awful packet loss and throughput.

[GeorgePapageorgakis]

Yes there are real world wireless connections with low bandwidth. This is what I am trying to do. I need to find a way to make libp2p work in this setup. For now let's ignore packet loss and keep only high latency on the table...

[MarcoPolo]

I'm not sure which timeout you're hitting. The first step to making this work for you is to figure out which timeout you need to increase. My guess is that you're hitting the Default Negotiate timeout, but you could be hitting something else. Try looking through the codebase for [dD]efault.*Timeout.*= and adjusting those values and seeing which one needs to change for your use case to work. Then we can figure out how to make changes to the constructor options to support it (like what libp2p.WithDialTimeout does).

The core maintainers don't have time to work on this ourselves, but if a well made and well tested PR shows up I'll review and we can merge.

[GeorgePapageorgakis]

Ok I will check it. However, what other timeout options are there apart from WithDialTimeout. I did not find any so far...

[MarcoPolo]

I don't think we've plumbed anything else through. You have to change the library itself to figure out which timeouts need to get adjusted, and then add the plumbing to expose the new timeout options.