WebDHT: browser-compatible distributed hash table for decentralized Web applications

Abstract

Modern browser technologies allow running highly portable and usable complex applications. However, the inability to access all the operating system features may limit their features or performance when compared to native software in certain scenarios. We investigate the design of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks of interconnected browsers to improve applications interconnecting users, such as videotelephony, messaging and gaming. Although peer-to-peer protocols are well-established in the literature, known designs and implementations cannot be executed on browsers due to constraints of browser environments. We propose WebDHT, a webassembly library for creating P2P networks among browsers which offers topic-based peer-discovery features and integrates usable identity authentication mechanisms. WebDHT implements a variant of the Kademlia protocol based on distributed hash tables (DHT) adapted to support WebRTC protocol. WebDHT requires a native server to be available only for network bootstrap, but leverages existing browsers connected to the DHT to decentralize WebRTC signaling backends. We propose an open-source implementation and two demonstrative applications for users messaging and multimedia streaming, and analyze limitations and future work for designing better browser-compatible P2P networks.