Phoenix vs Ranch

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1

Hello.

I’m developping a P2P network using Elixir and I’m wondering if I must go to raw TCP or using HTTP.

Currently I thought to use Ranch for internal communication and Phoenix for external communication but thinking if TCP based services are worth in term of performance vs HTTP calls.

Thanks

2

If you are using HTTP/2 then performance hit from doing many HTTP requests is smaller. Also there are WebSockets if you want. However we will not be able to provide you more help without more details about your application.

3

My application is a decentralized P2P network communicating which requires a high throughtput and low latency. Nodes need to keep long connection to monitor any disturbance in the network.

Currently I’m using Ranch for the P2P communication with custom message passing using ETF.

But as many people advertise a lot Phoenix and TCP based service not so much, I’m wondering the best approach, evenif services tend to be faster require less overhead and helps to keep long living connection.

WebSockets and TCP are quite similar indeed, but I’m wondering if Phoenix supports WebSocket without browser , only node to node.

4

“P2P” and “ETF” are two concepts that probably shouldn’t be put too close together:

Unless you trust all the nodes, in which case “P2P” is a bit of a misnomer.

To the original topic, I recommend that you get your network working with whatever transport makes it straightforward to implement, then measure extensively.

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In fact I’m using always :safe in :erlang.binary_to_term and I have another mechanism to avoid issue such as Anti Corruption Layer and Shared Signature verification to ensure trust.

Thanks for the advice.

After thinking, I’m will go with Ranch TCP for now, Phoenix or Web stuff does not matter for my P2P network.

6

Hi there, latency and throughput are at odds- when you optimize for one the other usually suffers. https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/inefficient-efficiency-5b3ab5294791

I’m not quite sure what you’re building, but creating a layer to abstract communications would allow you to go with HTTP and switch implementations later if you need to. HTTP will most probably allow for faster iteration as it is well supported on both hardware and language/tool/framework levels. As you develop your application and you gain more experience and insight into what is actually required, you could then consider switching protocols if you so deem.