Network Layer

The important concepts of the Network Layer are shown in the image below.
 
 

Network Layer

Overview of the network layer

 

Discovery

The net.discovery component consists of the DiscoveryManager and the DiscoveryManagerListener. It will request and keep track of the features supported by the contacts (e.g. whether Saros is supported or it is just a normal XMPP account) and stores the presence information for each user.
 

Transport

The classes Socks5Transport, IBBTransport and the BinaryChannelConnection belong to the Transport concept. Socks5Transport and IBBTransport both extend the abstract class ByteStreamTransport and use BytestreamManager from Smack to establish a bytestream connection to exchange data. There are two types of bytestream connections that can be established: Socks5 and IBB.
Socks5 can be either direct (peer-to-peer) or mediated (through a proxy server). TCP is the typically used transport protocol. The host sends a connection request to the participant and the participant tries to establish that connection. To back up the connection establishment in Saros, the participant also sends an connection request and the host tries to establish that connection. If the first connection is established and it is bidirectional then this one will be kept and the second will be discarded. If both connections are established but they are uni-directional then both connection will be kept and wrapped into one bidirectional one.
If no Socks5 connection can be established, a slower In Band Bytestream (IBB) connection will be established and used. IBB is an XMPP protocol extension that establishes a one-by-one bytestream between any two peers. The data is divided into smaller chunks and transported over XMPP.
BinaryChannelConnection is a class that encapsulates a bidirectional communication between two participants. The BinaryChannelConnection is working on a BytestreamSession which is either a Socks5Transport or a IBBTransport.
 

Data Transfer Manager

The DataTransferManager is the major class for sending arbitrary data. It is responsible for handling all transfers of binary data via ByteStreamTransport. If possible it reuses an established bytestream connection.
 

XMPP Transmitter / XMPP Receiver

The XMPPTransmitter and XMPPReceiver are important classes when sending, receiving, and processing data through XMPP.
The XMPPReceiver is a Facade for receiving XMPP packages. It receives and passes on packets and IncomingTransferObjects to registered listeners with accepting filters.
The XMPPTransmitter is the central class for sending object (e.g. activities, file lists) to peers by XMPP and receiving objects by registering a listener on the XMPPReceiver. A TransferDescription contains all necessary information for dealing with FileTransfers to a contact via Jingle, IBB, or Chat.
 

XMPP Connection Service

The XMPPConnectionService encapsulates XMPP connection related objects and functions.
 

Data connections in Saros

Saros uses XMPP for messaging and presence retrieval, sharing information by sending messages between participants. In addition to this method, Saros also uses the bytestream extensions (XEP-0065: SOCKS5 Bytestreams and XEP-0047: In-Band Bytestreams) for sending other arbitrary data, such as when sharing project files.
A Socks5 Bytestream (S5B) is established as a direct connection between two peers (direct Socks5 Bytestream) or with a proxy as mediator (mediated Socks5 Bytestream).
An In-Band Bytestream (IBB) is just a virtual connection. All the data is actually broken down into many chunks which are sent in messages over the XMPP network. Compared to a S5B, data exchange over IBB can be very slow because of the higher overhead and throughput limitations of XMPP servers (some servers only allow 1 KiB/s or 4 KiB/s).
Since an S5B is recommended for fast data exchange, Saros first attempts to create a S5B. If this fails, it then attempts to create an IBB.