Thanks for the response. This statement confuses me a bit. What is a relay? Does traffic go through it at all, or is it for connection negotiation, or some of both?

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4gotunameagain 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Your questions are answered in TFA, including multiple links to documentation about the process.

https://www.iroh.computer/docs/concepts/relay \

https://crates.io/crates/iroh

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b_fiive 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

sibling comment with links to docs is the more accurate, but to summarize, it's some of both:

* all connections are always e2ee (even when traffic flows through a relay)

* relays are both for connection negotiation, and as a fallback when a direct connection isn't possible

* initial packet is always sent through the relay to keep a fast time-to-first-byte, while a direct connection is negotiated in parallel. typical connections send a few hundred bytes over the relay & the rest of the connection lifetime is direct

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kiitos 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

tl;dr: resolving ids to destinations requires a third party relay

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dignifiedquire 5 days ago | parent [-]

relays _can_ be used to resolve IDs, but so can mDNS, an email or any other form of third party channel

	▲	kiitos 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		the use case here is somebody opens a web browser and types/pastes an ID into the top bar -- and it needs to resolve, correctly, without prior knowledge, in roughly the same amount of time that DNS takes today relays are the only thing among the things you listed that even have a chance of solving this problem