PeerTube
Prototype of a decentralized video streaming platform using P2P (bittorrent) directly in the web browser with WebTorrent.
Client
Server
## Demonstration
Want to see in action?
* You can directly test in your browser with this [demo server](http://peertube.cpy.re). Don't forget to use the latest version of Firefox/Chromium/(Opera?) and check your firewall configuration (for WebRTC)
* You can find [a video](https://vimeo.com/164881662 "Yes Vimeo, please don't judge me") to see how the "decentralization feature" looks like
## Why
We can't build a FOSS video streaming alternatives to YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo... with a centralized software. One organization alone cannot have enought money to pay bandwith and video storage of its server.
So we need to have a decentralized network (as [Diaspora](https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora) for example).
But it's not enought because one video could become famous and overload the server.
It's the reason why we need to use a P2P protocol to limit the server load.
Thanks to [WebTorrent](https://github.com/feross/webtorrent), we can make P2P (thus bittorrent) inside the web browser right now.
## Features
- [X] Frontend
- [X] ~~Simple frontend (All elements are generated by jQuery)~~
- [X] Angular 2 frontend
- [X] Join a network
- [X] Generate a RSA key
- [X] Ask for the friend list of other pods and make friend with them
- [X] Get the list of the videos owned by a pod when making friend with it
- [X] Post the list of its own videos when making friend with another pod
- [X] Quit a network
- [X] Upload a video
- [X] Seed the video
- [X] Send the meta data to all other friends
- [X] Remove the video
- [X] List the videos
- [X] Search a video name (local index)
- [X] View the video in an HTML5 page with WebTorrent
- [X] Manage admin account
- [X] Connection
- [X] Account rights (upload...)
- [X] Make the network auto sufficient (eject bad pods etc)
- [ ] Validate the prototype (test PeerTube in a real world with many pods and videos)
- [ ] Manage API breaks
- [ ] Add "DDOS" security (check if a pod don't send too many requests for example)
- [ ] Admin panel
- [ ] Stats about the network (how many friends, how many requests per hour...)
- [ ] Stats about videos
- [ ] Manage users (create/remove)
## Installation
### Front compatibility
* Chromium
* Firefox (>= 42 for MediaSource support)
### Dependencies
* **NodeJS >= 4.2**
* OpenSSL (cli)
* MongoDB
* ffmpeg xvfb-run libgtk2.0-0 libgconf-2-4 libnss3 libasound2 libxtst6 libxss1 libnotify-bin (for electron)
#### Debian
* Install NodeJS 4.2: [https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu-based-linux-distributions](https://nodejs.org/en/download/package-manager/#debian-and-ubuntu-based-linux-distributions)
* Add jessie backports to your *source.list*: http://backports.debian.org/Instructions/
* Run:
# apt-get update
# apt-get install ffmpeg mongodb openssl xvfb curl sudo git build-essential libgtk2.0-0 libgconf-2-4 libnss3 libasound2 libxtst6 libxss1 libnotify-bin
# npm install -g electron-prebuilt
#### Other distribution... (PR welcome)
### Sources
$ git clone https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube
$ cd PeerTube
$ npm install
$ npm run build
## Usage
### Development
$ npm start
### Test with 3 fresh nodes
$ npm run clean:server:test
$ npm run play
Then you will can access to the three nodes at `http://localhost:900{1,2,3}`. If you call "make friends" on `http://localhost:9002`, the pod 2 and 3 will become friends. Then if you call "make friends" on `http://localhost:9001` it will become friend with the pod 2 and 3 (check the configuration files). Then the pod will communicate with each others. If you add a video on the pod 3 you'll can see it on the pod 1 and 2 :)
### Production
If you want to run PeerTube for production (bad idea for now :) ):
$ cp config/production.yaml.example config/production.yaml
Then edit the `config/production.yaml` file according to your webserver configuration.
Finally, run the server with the `production` `NODE_ENV` variable set.
$ NODE_ENV=production npm start
### Other commands
To print all available command run:
$ npm run help
## Dockerfile
You can test it inside Docker with the [PeerTube-Docker repository](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube-Docker). Moreover it can help you to check how to create an environment with the required dependencies for PeerTube on a GNU/Linux distribution.
## Architecture
See [ARCHITECTURE.md](https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/master/ARCHITECTURE.md) for a more detailed explication.
### Backend
* The backend whould be a REST API
* Servers would communicate with each others with it
* Each server of a network has a list of all other servers of the network
* When a new installed server wants to join a network, it just has to get the list of the servers via one server and tell them "Hi I'm new in the network, communicate with me too please"
* Each server has its own users who query it (search videos, where the torrent URI of this specific video is...)
* Server begins to seed and sends to the other servers of the network the video information (name, short description, torrent URI) of a new uploaded video
* Each server has a RSA key to encrypt and sign communications with other servers
* A server is a tracker responsible for all the videos uploaded in it
* Even if nobody watches a video, it is seeded by the server where the video was uploaded
* A server would run webtorrent-hybrid to be a bridge with webrtc/standard bittorrent protocol
* A network can live and evolve by expelling bad pod (with too many downtimes for example)
See the ARCHITECTURE.md for more informations. Do not hesitate to give your opinion :)
Here are some simple schemes:
### Frontend
There would be a simple frontend (Bootstrap, AngularJS) but since the backend is a REST API anybody could build a frontend (Web application, desktop application...).
The backend uses bittorrent protocol, so users could use their favorite bittorrent client to download/play the video after having its torrent URI.