[b_fiive]

it's p2p. dumbpipe is hardcoded to use a public set of relays that we run for free (we being number 0, the team that make iroh & dumbpipe).

we can definitely add a config argument to skip the hardcoded relays & provide custom ones!

[binarymax]

Thanks for the response. This statement confuses me a bit. What is a relay? Does traffic go through it at all, or is it for connection negotiation, or some of both?

[4gotunameagain]

Your questions are answered in TFA, including multiple links to documentation about the process.

https://www.iroh.computer/docs/concepts/relay \

https://crates.io/crates/iroh

[b_fiive]

sibling comment with links to docs is the more accurate, but to summarize, it's some of both:

* all connections are always e2ee (even when traffic flows through a relay)

* relays are both for connection negotiation, and as a fallback when a direct connection isn't possible

* initial packet is always sent through the relay to keep a fast time-to-first-byte, while a direct connection is negotiated in parallel. typical connections send a few hundred bytes over the relay & the rest of the connection lifetime is direct

[kiitos]

tl;dr: resolving ids to destinations requires a third party relay