Prior to the introduction of gossip, a tcp connection would not see
regular communication until it had been marked as 'established',
because the topology communication scheme would periodically send
'FetchAll' only after that. So in the absence of udp connectivity we'd
time out. The timeout could of course occur for other reasons, namely
disrupted tcp connectivity, but the combination of a timeout and 'not
established' pointed to a lack of udp connectivity as a likely
cause. So that's what we checked for.
In the new gossip-based topology communication, however, gossip (of
anything, not just topology) occurs as soon as we have tcp
connectivity. Therefore we will no longer encounter a timeout when
just udp connectivity is disrupted. Which makes our check invalid.
So instead we introduce a one-shot timer, created on handshake
completion and cancelled when we mark the connection as
'established'. When the timer fires, and the connection still hasn't
been established, we shut down the connection with an error indicating
lack of udp connectivity.
The router may receive heartbeat packets that originated from (the
other end of) a different connection with the remote peer than the
current one. If we don't detect that, we may erroneously tell the
remote peer to mark the connection as 'established'. Which can lead to
a crash.
To enable detection, we include the connection UID - which is the same
at both ends - in the heartbeat frame. That way we can simply ignore
heartbeats with a different connection UID than the current connection
to the remote peer.
Previously heartbeat frames were zero length. In order to include the
64 bit connection UID we could just send 8 octets instead. However,
that would potentially trip up the Ethernet decoder at the other end,
and in any case we might as well make heartbeats fit the format of
other special frames, namely having an all-zero Ethernet header. This
in fact results in a simplification of the special frame handling,
since heartbeats are no longer *extra* special.
Fixes#352.
Currently we cannot distinguish bi-directional and uni-directional
connectivity between peers. This is what currently happens for a
connection from A to B...
A: remoteUDPAddr=X
B: remoteUDPAddr=nil
A: send fast heartbeats over UDP
B: receive heartbeat; remoteUDPAddr is nil
remoteUDPAddr=Y
send 'established' over TCP
established=true
send slow heartbeats over UDP
A: receive 'established' over TCP
established=true
send slow heartbeats over UDP
If udp packets make it through from A to B but not B to A then both
ends mark the connection as 'established'. Conversely, if udp packets
make it through from B to A but not A to B then the connection is not
marked as 'established' at either end.
In the new scheme, this is what happens...
A: receivedHeartbeat=false, remoteUDPAddr=X
B: receivedHeartbeat=false, remoteUDPAddr=nil
A: send fast heartbeats over UDP
B: receive heartbeat; receivedHeartbeat is false
remoteUDPAddr=Y
receivedHeartbeat=true
send 'established' over TCP
send fast heartbeats over UDP
A: receive 'established' over TCP (*)
established=true
send slow heartbeats over UDP
A: receive heartbeat; receivedHeartbeat is false (*)
receivedHeartbeat=true
send 'established' over TCP
B: receive 'established' over TCP
established=true
send slow heartbeats over UDP
(*) either of these may occur first
Now, if udp packets make it through from A to B not not B to A then A
marks the connection as 'established' but B doesn't. Conversely, if
udp packets make it through from B to A but not A to B then B marks
the connection as 'established' but A doesn't.
The weave protocol already effectively performs heartbeating -
FetchAll is performed at regular intervals. Hence we can detect stale
connections by the lack of receiving any data for approximately that
interval (we use x2).
We use the same interval to set a time limit on the handshake too, and
any subsequent interactions prior to the connection being fully
established.
Fixes#272.
Matthias Radestock