Binds locally hosted TCP/UDP server to peer-to-peer.
Warning
This program is under heavy development and extremely experimental. Please expect things to break and different behaviour between versions.
Known good versions: v0.2.9a, v0.2.8a
Basically, Filum allows you to "open a port" on demand using P2P, that people can connect to using this same program.
Written in Rust, running Iroh under the hood. This is a thin program on top to redirect packets between server/client over P2P if possible. Iroh will use its public relay server if a P2P connection cannot be made.
This program is best suited for testing or hosting a game server without the hassle of port forwarding and dynamic public IP stuff.
| Client support | Server support |
|---|---|
| ✅ TCP | ✅ TCP |
| ❌ UDP (wip) | ❌ UDP (wip) |
Your packets will go through 3 gates: Local client ⇾ Filum ⇾ Local server
Because of this overhead (doubling the amount of data), it will be ~x2 slower, but that's still better than alternatives like VPN or tunneling through third-party server.
I've tested a release build of Filum with a heavily modded Minecraft Fabric server on a local machine.
Tested on i5-7500 3.40GHz:
| Native port | Filum port | |
|---|---|---|
| Latency impact: | ||
| Send packets: | ~1ms | ~2ms (~x2) |
| CPU usage: | ||
| Client: | 0% | ~5.5% |
| Server: | 0% | ~4.5% |
Download a 85MB file over HTTP. Left is Filum, right is native.
On first connection to host, instance will have to perform NAT hole punching and negotiate with the host for a bidirectional connection, which is why it will take a bit of time to set everything up, but once connected, it will have minimal to no latency, all depends on your physical location.
On both sides, one single command is enough to get things started.
filum host tcp 127.0.0.1:<port>
This command will then display an ID that you will share it to client, you can send it via mails, pigeons, or anything you prefer.
> Service started, you can now share this ID to client to let them connect to 127.0.0.1:<port>.
ID: <141 characters, odd choice>
After getting the ID, put it in filum to bridge the gap between two networks:
filum instance tcp <destination> <141 characters, odd choice>
The name instance is to not be confused with the client that are connecting through this.
The port argument is the port that filum will use on instance to make an entry point, the instance will use this port to connect to the destination server, so it's merely a mimic port that spit every thing back to the server.
I've made a Colab notebook to create a filum server. Download the official filum binary, and you can try it for yourself!
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1Wf4nEgXwUFckM1qkvUYPyESHvqwiRY2P?usp=sharing