PoC9 changes to P2P

[fjl]

PoC 8 (E.T.A mid Feburary) introduces RLPX, a new encrypted, authenticated and properly framed transport protocol for the P2P layer.

The current revision of the RLPX specification is here.

The PoC 8 document is on etherpad.

The changes are

• New framing layer that ensures fair queueing among protocols (not in PoC 8)
• transport encryption (very likely not in PoC8)
• Kademlia-like node table (@fjl p2p/discover: Node Discovery Protocol #275)
• Encryption handshake (@zelig RLPx p2p crypto layer (work in progress, do not merge) #271)
• Integration of the above into package p2p (@fjl PoC8 Networking Integration #292)

Tasks beyond basic implementation

• CLI flags for system-testing
  • -bootnodes
  • -nodekey
• Port mapping integration for p2p/discover
• A replacement for cmd/peerserver that can be used as Kademlia bootstrap node
• Make UDP tests in package p2p/discover more reliable
• Improve network UI in Mist

Remaining Tasks for PoC9

• Fix Table.closest so it doesn't send duplicates (use random bumps in the tests)
• Persist discovery nodes for faster network join (being worked on by @karalabe, p2p/discover: persistent node database #793).

[obscuren]

@fjl please update

[fjl]

updated. will update more often.

[fjl]

We now have a basic version that implements the features above.
The merge into develop will need coordination among implementations because
of its effect on the test network.

• cpp-ethereum isn't ready yet.
• pyethereum might be ready, will ask @heikoheiko.
• on our side, there are a few bugs that I know of, e.g. ecies: shared key is too big #227.

I will work on ironing out bugs for now.

[fjl]

Added some more tasks. These will have to go into #292 because we can't merge yet.