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Is it possible for nodes to use their UDP channels to send other data than transactions? Or would node-to-node messages need to get wrapped in a transaction first? I'm thinking along the lines of an IXI module being capable communicating with neighboring nodes via lightweight messages.

Like "please lower your transaction send-rate to me for a minute because I'm low on memory" or "will go offline for 5 minutes".

Daniel F
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  • Sure they can, they are standard computing systems. The question is if there's something standardized to do so? – Helmar Dec 23 '17 at 11:43
  • I thought that it was clear that I'm intending to use the same port, the one which IRI is already bound to. If there is an internal architecture which enables this communication. No new ports. – Daniel F Dec 23 '17 at 12:32
  • For direct (non-tangle) communication you don't need IOTA in the first place. You still can do any type of communication by encoding messages in transactions (that's what they are for). – cmpn Dec 23 '17 at 14:32
  • @cmpn can you please elaborate shortly? So there are "non-tangle transactions"? I'm about to start reading the source code so see what exactly happens with incoming transactions. I am liking the code which I've seen in IRI up to now, it's so verly cleanly written. Contrary to the one of the Python Library... – Daniel F Dec 23 '17 at 15:48
  • With non-tangle communication I was just referring to direct communication without IOTA. Tangle transactions however are always broadcasted by every participant in the network (who receives it). The thing is, if you just want to send direct messages between neighbors, you would simply use a different protocol for that. – cmpn Dec 24 '17 at 11:57

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No, it's not possible.

The UDP port indicated in the configuration only checks for transactions as incoming data.

If a neighbor sends anything else than a transaction, a log entry "Received an Invalid TransactionViewModel. Dropping it..." will get generated.

If an unknown machine sends anything to the node and the node is not configured as a testnet node, it ignores the incoming data completely.

https://github.com/iotaledger/iri/blob/501e9493bc0cbd1ef1b3e0df6da39efb8ef4083d/src/main/java/com/iota/iri/network/Node.java#L232

Daniel F
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