get_peers response

libtorrent always responds with nodes to a get_peers request. If it has peers for the specified info-hash, it will return values as well. This is because just because some peer announced to us, doesn't mean that we are among the 8 closest nodes of the info hash. libtorrent also keeps traversing nodes using get_peers until it has found the 8 closest ones, and then announces to those nodes.

client identification

In each DHT packet, an extra key is inserted named "v". This is a string describing the client and version used. This can help alot when debugging and finding errors in client implementations. The string is encoded as four characters, two characters describing the client and two characters interpreted as a binary number describing the client version.

Currently known clients:

IPv6 support

The DHT messages that don't support IPv6 are the nodes replies. They encode all the contacts as 6 bytes packed together in sequence in a string. The problem is that IPv6 endpoints cannot be encoded as 6 bytes, but needs 18 bytes. The extension libtorrent applies is to add another key, called nodes2.

nodes2 may be present in replies that contains a nodes key. It is encoded as a list of strings. Each string represents one contact and is encoded as 20 bytes node-id and then a variable length encoded IP address (6 bytes in IPv4 case and 18 bytes in IPv6 case).

As an optimization, libtorrent does not include the extra key in case there are only IPv4 nodes present.