Weekly developer meeting summary, April 12th

[sanity]

Participants

• Ian Clarke
• Ignacio Duart

Summary

Focused on several key areas of the network's development, particularly around transport issues and connection protocols. Goal is launching the network before the end of April.

Discussion Highlights:

1. Transport Issues and Fixes:

   • Ignacio reported ongoing work to resolve packet dropping during initial connections, including testing the gateway code path.
   • An issue was identified where packet acknowledgments were not working correctly when multiple packets were dropped consecutively.
   • A new approach for handling disconnects was proposed, involving a timeout mechanism where connections would be dropped if no packets were received within a specified time frame (suggested around 30 seconds to a minute).

2. Connection Protocols:

   • Agreed to implement a "keep-alive" packet sent every 30 seconds to ensure both ends of a connection remain active.

3. Future Plans and Adjustments:

   • Plans for making the network operational and public were discussed, with a goal to showcase a running network soon, albeit with expectations set for potential early adopter issues.
   • The necessity of versioning in the connection protocol to manage compatibility between different network versions was emphasized.

The meeting encapsulated technical troubleshooting, strategic planning for immediate fixes, and broader operational tactics to sustain the development momentum of Freenet. The key takeaway was the need for a robust transport system and effective communication protocols to ensure network stability and scalability.