README.md

   1 # PeerTube
   2
   3 [![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)
   4 [![Dependencies Status](https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube.svg)](https://david-dm.org/Chocobozzz/PeerTube)
   5
   6 Prototype of a decentralized video streaming platform using P2P (bittorrent) directly in the web browser with [webtorrent](https://github.com/feross/webtorrent).
   7
   8 [![js-standard-style](https://cdn.rawgit.com/feross/standard/master/badge.svg)](https://github.com/feross/standard)
   9
  10 ## Why
  11
  12 We can't build a FOSS video streaming alternatives to YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo... with a centralized software. One organization alone cannot have enought money to pay bandwith and video storage of its server.
  13
  14 So we need to have a decentralized network (as [Diaspora](https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora) for example).
  15 But it's not enought because one video could become famous and overload the server.
  16 It's the reason why we need to use a P2P protocol to limit the server load.
  17 Thanks to [webtorrent](https://github.com/feross/webtorrent), we can make P2P (thus bittorrent) inside the web browser right now.
  18
  19 ## Features
  20
  21 - [ ] Frontend
  22   - [X] Simple frontend (All elements are generated by jQuery)
  23   - [ ] AngularJS frontend
  24 - [X] Join a network
  25   - [X] Generate a RSA key
  26   - [X] Ask for the friend list of other pods and make friend with them
  27   - [X] Get the list of the videos owned by a pod when making friend with it
  28   - [X] Post the list of its own videos when making friend with another pod
  29 - [X] Quit a network
  30 - [X] Upload a video
  31   - [X] Seed the video
  32   - [X] Send the meta data to all other friends
  33 - [X] Remove the video
  34 - [X] List the videos
  35 - [X] Search a video name (local index)
  36 - [X] View the video in an HTML5 page with webtorrent
  37 - [ ]  Manage user accounts
  38   - [ ] Inscription
  39   - [ ] Connection
  40   - [ ] Account rights (upload...)
  41 - [X] Make the network auto sufficient (eject bad pods etc)
  42 - [ ] Manage API breaks
  43 - [ ] Add "DDOS" security (check if a pod don't send too many requests for example)
  44
  45
  46 ## Usage
  47
  48 ### Front compatibility
  49
  50   * Chromium
  51   * Firefox (>= 42 for MediaSource support)
  52
  53 ### Dependencies
  54
  55   * **NodeJS >= 4.2**
  56   * Grunt-cli (npm install -g grunt-cli)
  57   * OpenSSL (cli)
  58   * MongoDB
  59   * xvfb-run libgtk2.0-0 libgconf-2-4 libnss3 libasound2 libxtst6 libxss1 (for electron)
  60
  61 ### Test It!
  62
  63     $ git clone https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube
  64     $ cd PeerTube
  65     # npm install -g electron-prebuilt
  66     $ npm install
  67     $ npm start
  68
  69 ### Test with 3 fresh nodes
  70
  71     $ scripts/clean_test.sh
  72     $ scripts/run_servers.sh
  73
  74 Then you will can access to the three nodes at http://localhost:900{1,2,3}. If you call "make friends" on http://localhost:9002, the pod 2 and 3 will become friends. Then if you call "make friends" on http://localhost:9001 it will become friend with the pod 2 and 3 (check the configuration files). Then the pod will communicate with each others. If you add a video on the pod 3 you'll can see it on the pod 1 and 2 :)
  75
  76 ### Dockerfile
  77
  78 You can test it inside Docker with the [PeerTube-Docker repository](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube-Docker). Moreover it can help you to check how to create an environment with the required dependencies for PeerTube on a GNU/Linux distribution.
  79
  80 ## Architecture
  81
  82 See [ARCHITECTURE.md](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE.md) for a more detailed explication.
  83
  84 ### Backend
  85
  86   * The backend whould be a REST API
  87   * Servers would communicate with each others with it
  88     * Each server of a network has a list of all other servers of the network
  89     * When a new installed server wants to join a network, it just has to get the list of the servers via one server and tell them "Hi I'm new in the network, communicate with me too please"
  90     * Each server has its own users who query it (search videos, where the torrent URI of this specific video is...)
  91     * Server begins to seed and sends to the other servers of the network the video information (name, short description, torrent URI) of a new uploaded video
  92     * Each server has a RSA key to encrypt and sign communications with other servers
  93   * A server is a tracker responsible for all the videos uploaded in it
  94   * Even if nobody watches a video, it is seeded by the server where the video was uploaded
  95   * A server would run webtorrent-hybrid to be a bridge with webrtc/standard bittorrent protocol
  96   * A network can live and evolve by expelling bad pod (with too many downtimes for example)
  97
  98 See the ARCHITECTURE.md for more informations. Do not hesitate to give your opinion :)
  99
 100 Here are some simple schemes:
 101
 102 ![Decentralized](http://lutim.cpy.re/aV2pawRz)
 103
 104 ![Watch a video](http://lutim.cpy.re/AlOeoVPi)
 105
 106 ![Watch a video P2P](http://lutim.cpy.re/fb0JH6C3)
 107
 108 ![Join a network](http://lutim.cpy.re/ijuCgmpI)
 109
 110 ![Many networks](http://lutim.cpy.re/iz8mXHug)
 111
 112 ### Frontend
 113
 114 There would be a simple frontend (Bootstrap, AngularJS) but since the backend is a REST API anybody could build a frontend (Web application, desktop application...).
 115 The backend uses bittorrent protocol, so users could use their favorite bittorrent client to download/play the video after having its torrent URI.