Wiki https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Passim_P2P_Metadata This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux. This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee. == Summary == Passim is a local caching server that broadcasts specific shared metadata to other clients on your local network to reduce the amount of duplicate data downloaded from the internet. == Owner == * Name: [[User:rhughes| Richard Hughes]] * Email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxx == Detailed Description == Much of the software running on your computer that connects to other systems over the Internet needs to periodically download metadata or information needed to perform other requests. Everybody downloads the same file from a CDN, and although a CDN is not super-expensive, it's certainly not free. Everybody on your current network (perhaps thousands of users) has to download the same 1MB blob of metadata from a CDN over a perhaps-expensive internet link. What if we could download the file from the CDN on one machine, and the next machine on the local network that needs it instead downloads it from the first machine? We could put a limit on the number of times it can be shared, and the maximum age so that we don't store yesterday's metadata forever, and so that we don't turn a ThinkPad X220 into a machine distributing 1Gb/s to every other machine in the office. We could cut the CDN traffic by at least one order of magnitude, but possibly much more. This is better for the person paying the cloud bill, the person paying for the internet connection, and the planet as a whole. == Feedback == IPFS is an existing project that's existed for many years and allows sharing with other users not on your local network. It's not packaged in any distributions and not trivial to install correctly. Its main drawback is that it requires an internet to IPFS "gateway" which costs a large amount of money for the LVFS, and that it's not EAR/ITAR compliant. I've asked for feedback already on fedora-devel and have already started making changes and suggestions from that discussion -- for instance splitting out a -libs subpackage. See https://www.spinics.net/lists/fedora-devel/msg315078.html for the discussion. == Benefit to Fedora == Fedora will consume less bandwidth when checking for firmware updates. Per user there is only a 2MB/day saving, but for millions of Fedora users this adds up to a huge amount of saved data (and money) globally. == Scope == The code is already written, tested and ready to go. The passim package is already included in Fedora (although not installed by default) and fwupd needs an upstream release which includes this functionality -- which is scheduled for 2 weeks time. == Upgrade/compatibility impact == Old versions of fwupd will be updated and start sharing metadata with other local users with no changes required. == How To Test == Install two physical machines or VMs with Fedora 40 that are both on the local network. Run `fwupdmgr refresh` on the first, and observe that `passim dump` or `https://localhost:27500/` lists the published metadata file . Then run `fwupdmgr refresh --verbose` on the second machine and see that the file is downloaded from https://localhost:27500 rather than `cdn.fwupd.org`. Avahi needs to be enabled and running, as does `passimd` although both are autostarted as required. == User Experience == Each user will use 2MB less bandwidth per day when there are other users on the local network with the same metadata file. There is no user-visible difference to any operation. == Dependencies == None; fwupd will recommend passim to be installed by default and autolaunch it as required. == Contingency Plan == Change `Recommends: passim` to `Suggests: passim` in the `fwupd.spec` file so that it's not autoinstalled by default. In this case fwupd will fall back to downloading from the CDN every day. == Documentation == * https://github.com/hughsie/passim/blob/main/README.md == Release Notes == Fedora now uses a peer-to-peer service called Passim to reduce the amount of bandwidth used when downloading metadata. -- Aoife Moloney Product Owner Community Platform Engineering Team Red Hat EMEA Communications House Cork Road Waterford _______________________________________________ devel-announce mailing list -- devel-announce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-announce-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel-announce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
