PeerTube/ARCHITECTURE.md
2018-01-12 18:07:41 +01:00

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# Architecture
## Vocabulary
- **Fediverse:** several servers following each others.
- **Instance:** a server which runs PeerTube in the fediverse.
- **Origin instance:** the instance on which the video was uploaded and which
is seeding (through the WebSeed protocol) the video.
- **Following:** the action of a PeerTube instance which will follow another
instance (subscribe to its videos).
## Base
### Communications
* All the communication between the instances are signed with [Linked Data
Signatures](https://w3c-dvcg.github.io/ld-signatures/) with the private key
of the account that authored the action.
* We use the [ActivityPub](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/) protocol (only
server-server for now). Object models could be found in
[shared/models/activitypub
directory](/shared/models/activitypub).
* All the requests are retried several times if they fail.
### Instance
* An instance has a websocket tracker which is responsible for all the video
uploaded in it.
* An instance has an administrator that can follow other instances.
* An instance can be configured to follow back automatically.
* An instance can blacklist other instances (only used in "follow back"
mode).
* An instance cannot choose which other instances follow it, but it can
decide to **reject all** followers.
* After having uploaded a video, the instance seeds it (WebSeed protocol).
* If a user wants to watch a video, they ask its instance the magnet URI and
the frontend adds the torrent (with WebTorrent), creates the HTML5 video
player and streams the file into it.
* A user watching a video seeds it too (BitTorrent). Thus another user who is
watching the same video can get the data from the origin server and other
users watching it.