So I’m excited to start running a connector( hopefully to be an ilsp), I am currently learning and looking at different ways to set up the connector. I have a bunch of questions some I don’t know how to frame so I’ll start with this.
"moneyd will only connect to a community network of connectors, not the Interledger livenet".
What is the difference between live Interledger network vs community connectors?
isn’t the network composed of connectors which form the interledger?
or is the interledger network the edges(kinda doesn’t make sense) and community connectors are a bunch of connectors and tier-1 connectors?
hopefully, I made some sense to someone knowledgeable.
thanks for all.
Hi, there are also some test/development networks running in parallel. To my knowledge Moneyd can be configured as needed. It is not a fully fledged connector though, but more like an “end-user” connector. Concerning the full-fledged connectors, there is the “reference” connector in node.js, and a newer implemetation called Rafiki. Also a rust implementation, a Java one and I think one in Go.
Any set of participants (each operating their own connector) can agree to form their own Interledger network. In the same way we refer to “the Internet” as the largest and most inter-connected IP internetwork, “the Interledger” or the “livenet” would probably refer to the most interconnected Interledger network, of which there could be multiple.
Coil, GateHub, Stronghold, and Uphold are connected to one another on an Interledger network (which we refer to as “the livenet” since it has the most participants and payment volume, although technically there’s nothing canonical about this). To send payments from your connector to another user on that network, your connector must be connected/peered with at least one connector on that network. If one of those existing participants and you agreed to peer with one another, you’d be connected to the livenet. However, this would necessitate negotiating with one of those connector operators, and probably require legal agreements (probably not practical unless you’re running a business in which those connectors would have an incentive to connect with you).
By contrast, the “community network” is ad-hoc network in which connectors openly peer with one another. Currently, it’s not possible to send payments from a node on the community network to a node on the livenet.
An Interledger connector is a node connected or peered with other nodes that routes Interledger packets. They’re performing the same function, the livenet/community network distinction is simply useful to designate which network or other nodes a node is interconnected with.
Yeah, more or less. Each connector has a set of peers (other connectors that they’re directly connected to) and an account with each of those peers (and vice-versa, each peer connector would have an account with this connector). These accounts are how connectors track how much they owe one another. When a connector forwards a packet, it has to choose one of its peers as the next hop to send the packet to – the routing table just helps it decide which peer.
There’s a list of connectors hardcoded into moneyd. The CLI lets the user choose one of them or have one selected randomly. These connectors each operate an open server that any client can connect to, and automatically create a new account when a client connects. (Any connector could submit a PR on GitHub to get added to this list, though moneyd is not well maintained/used right now).