DCUtR

Background #

Relays are used to traverse NATs by acting as proxies, but this can be expensive to scale and maintain, and may result in low-bandwidth, high-latency connections. Hole punching is another technique that enables NAT traversal by enabling two nodes behind NATs to communicate directly. However, in addition to relay nodes, it requires another piece of infrastructure called a signaling server.

The good news is that libp2p offers a hole punching solution which eliminates the need for centralized signaling servers and allows the use of distributed relay nodes.

What is Direct Connection Upgrade through Relay? #

The libp2p DCUtR (Direct Connection Upgrade through Relay) is a protocol for establishing direct connections between nodes through hole punching, without a signaling server. DCUtR involves synchronizing and opening connections to each peer’s predicted external addresses.

The DCUtR protocol uses the protocol ID /libp2p/dcutr and involves the exchange of Connect and Sync messages.

The DCUtR protocol supports different types of connections, such as TCP and QUIC, the process of establishing a connection is different for each type.

@Dennis-tra has a great talk on dctur and its holepunching success rates.

A helpful resource for understanding how NAT traversal works is this blog post by Tailscale.