Node types

Nodes participating in the gossip network can have several types.

• Client servers
• Account storage
• History storage
• Ephemeral command-line utilities
• Maybe others

All types require a TLS certificate signed by the network CA. Ephemeral utilities will simply emit events then shutdown, without ever receiving data from the network. These do not need to be configured in the global network config.

All other node types will participate fully in the state synchronisation process, receiving and forwarding events, and will all have a full view of the current network state. What differs is what they do with it.

Client servers will, obviously, talk to clients.

Account storage nodes will act as the authoritative store for account and registration data. While most of this information will be distributed in the network state, it should only be updated by the current primary account node. Update operations initiated by clients should be forwarded to one of these nodes which will apply the update to the network state.

History storage nodes will store message and event history for offline clients. While it is expected that client servers will keep short-term history, requests from clients for history beyond what the local client server has available can be forwarded to a history storage node.