Connection making

Join codes

When you run ethersync share, you will get a short "join code" like 3-exhausted-bananas. Another person can use it to connect to you! The code only works once. You can learn about the security properties in the Magic Wormhole documentation.

Secret addresses

Since version 0.7.0 Ethersync uses iroh for making a connection. To connect to another daemon, we're using a combination of the iroh Node Identifier and a secret key which, smashed together, which looks like 429e94...0e9819#32374e...4a6789. We call this the node's secret address. Treat it like a password. After using a join code, the secret address is stored in your .ethersync/config.

Peer to peer

You can directly connect across different local networks, even when each of you is behind a router. This way of connecting is more "ad hoc" and useful if you want to collaborate over a short period of time (as described in more detail in the pair programming scenario).

Cloud peer

When you want to have an "always online" host, such that every user can connect to it at the time of their liking, let's say you're collaborating in a group on taking notes.

Other systems solve this with a client-server architecture, where the server is always online, and the clients connect to it as needed.

But Ethersync is fundamentally peer-to-peer, so what we suggest to use is what the research group Ink & Switch call a "cloud peer": You run an Ethersync peer on a public server, and all users will then connect to that server.

This is only recommended for people who are comfortable setting up services on a server. But the nice part is that if someone did this for you, you can just connect to it not worrying about the nitty-gritty networking details.