Forban is a p2p application for link-local and local area network.
Forban works independently from Internet and use only the local area capabilities to announce, discover, search or share files. Forban relies on HTTP and he is opportunistic.
The name took his origins from the old French word : http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/forban
Forban name can be also a playword in English for banning an unwanted software or services on Internet.
Forban is free software licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3. http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html
Forban presentation given at FOSDEM 2011 or another Forban presentation given at HAXOGREEN 2012.
The setup is quite easy :
Clone the repository:
git clone git@github.com:adulau/Forban.git
Go to the cloned directory:
cd Forban
and starts Forban processes:
./bin/forbanctl start
Now you can open your favorite browser at the following location:
http://127.0.0.1:12555
To share some files, you'll just need to copy them in ./var/share/
And if you want to use another share directory don't forget to copy the ./var/share/forban directory containing CSS and images for the website. It can work without it but it's more handy for users browsing directly your Forban in passive mode.
ASCII encoded message using UDP on port 12555 with the following format:
forban;name;<nameoftheforban>;uuid;<identityoftheforban>;hmac;<hmacvaluecofindex>
The messages are flooded in broadcast (IPv4) and using ff02::1 (IPv6) at a regular interval.
Based on the source IP and the destination port used, a HTTP URL is build to get to default forban service.
The UDP port 12555 is there for announcing forban services. The TCP port 12555 is the HTTP server running for forban services.
base URL: [REQUIRED] http://:/
index URL where Forban stored his index: [REQUIRED] http://:/s/?g=forban/index
store URL where Forban stored his loot and how to get a file: [REQUIRED] http://:/s/?g=base64_urlsafe()&f=b64e
search URL: [OPTIONAL] http://:/q/?v=&r=
REQUIRED interfaces are required to have a full operational Forban protocol in all the modes. The OPTIONAL interfaces are not required for machine-to-machine interaction but used to ease the life of the users.
'+' is replaced by '-'. '/' is replaced by '_'(underscore). '=' is replaced by '!'.
This is following the same approach of MIME::Base64::URLSafe or the python base64.urlsafe_b64encode with an addition to the equal sign being replaced by an exclamation mark.
- Opportunistic mode
- Shared mode
The opportunistic mode and shared used all the REQUIRED components of the protocol. The only difference is the lack of automatic file fetching in the shared mode. The shared mode is usally used on fixed node content where the opportunistic fetching is not desired (e.g. a fixed bookshelf).
The opportunistic mode is working as a simple gossip (or epidemic) protocol to replicate the information from one local to another local Forban.
The optional HMAC value has two purposes :
- To know if the index has been updated
- and to verify (if a PSK is set) if the index has been tampered.
When a PSK is not set, the default PSK value is 'Forban'.
The value is optional as other Forban can download any index when they want.
- Python (tested successfully with 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7) - 2.5 is required for the uuid library
- There is no additional Python libraries required