Ability to know how many MB are downloaded from the server or peers

[Booteille]

Describe the problem to be solved

When watching a video, I would like to be able to know how many megabytes are downloaded from the server and/or from peers.
So we could estimate how efficient is the P2P mechanism.

Describe the solution you would like:

When hovering with the mouse the Download/Upload/Peers part of the player, I would love to have « Total Downloaded » separated in « Downloaded from the server » and « Downloaded from peers ».

[Poslovitch]

https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/client/src/assets/player/videojs-components/p2p-info-button.ts

It splits between P2P & HTTP. But isn't the server considered a "Peer" when using P2P? If so, how could we distinguish the server from other peers? Would PlayerNetworkInfo need to be reworked?

[rigelk]

https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/client/src/assets/player/videojs-components/p2p-info-button.ts

It splits between P2P & HTTP. But isn't the server considered a "Peer" when using P2P?

@Poslovitch It is a peer, using webseed. Just checking the peer’s IP matches the resolved IP from the origin server domain name should be enough.

[Poslovitch]

Okay, I might work on that, but I'll have to dig deeper into PeerTube and learn a few things first.
Thanks for your answer @rigelk.

[Poslovitch]

@rigelk I found this NodeJS lib (https://nodejs.org/api/dns.html#dns_dns_lookup_hostname_options_callback)
Is it something I would be allowed to add to the dependencies (package.json) ?

[rigelk]

@Poslovitch you are looking at the NodeJS standard library 🙃 But please check the API exists in all ranges of NodeJS supported by PeerTube

I’m curious though: what are you planning to do server-side to adress what seems like a client-side computation?

[Chocobozzz]

Webtorrent player does not have the info peer VS HTTP:

PeerTube/client/src/assets/player/webtorrent/webtorrent-plugin.ts

Line 489 in 9eccae7

return this.player.trigger('p2pInfo', {

But our HLS player has:

PeerTube/client/src/assets/player/p2p-media-loader/p2p-media-loader-plugin.ts

Line 155 in ec903c0

return this.player.trigger('p2pInfo', {

Our webtorrent player is in maintenance mode, so it's fine if we only implement this issue in the HLS player.

[Poslovitch]

please check the API exists in all ranges of NodeJS supported by PeerTube
I’m curious though: what are you planning to do server-side to adress what seems like a client-side computation?

@rigelk According to the docs, this lib exists nearly since the inception of NodeJS. I guess that means it's supported by PeerTube (which, afaik, is >= 10 and < 13, right?)

@Chocobozzz @rigelk I hope I'm not wasting your time on that - I sort of use PeerTube as a learning/practicing project to learn TypeScript and Angular (I've only used "vanilla" JS so far) -.

Here's what I want to do, based on what you suggested me:

• Modify PlayerNetworkInfo to add p2p.downloadedFromPeers and p2p.downloadedFromServer (thus removing p2p.downloaded, as it could be easily recalculated by the client)
• Find where the P2P is handled (here? https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/client/src/assets/player/p2p-media-loader/p2p-media-loader-plugin.ts)
  • Get the hostname of the instance (how?)
  • Resolve the hostname of the instance through dns.js to get the IP
  • Check if the IP of the server is the same as one of the peers: if that's the case, then increment p2p.downloadedFromServer instead of p2p.downloadedFromPeers
• Tweak the p2p-info-button.ts to make use of these new fields.

Sadly, the things that are in bold are those I currently don't know how to do.

However, I've noticed this line:

PeerTube/client/src/assets/player/p2p-media-loader/p2p-media-loader-plugin.ts

Line 120 in a3f1595

this.statsP2PBytes.numPeers = 1 + this.options.redundancyUrlManager.countBaseUrls()

Would this.options.redundancyUrlManager contain the list of the "peers" I'm looking for? Its name says otherwise ("redundancy"), but it contains a list of strings (urls? IP addresses?), so I might be on the right path.
Would I therefore have to add a method to https://github.com/Chocobozzz/PeerTube/blob/develop/client/src/assets/player/p2p-media-loader/redundancy-url-manager.ts in order to retrieve them?

[Chocobozzz]

The p2p-media-loader plugin already gives you appropriate stats: p2p.downloaded represents data downloaded from other peers (and not from an HTTP endpoint). Then you don't need to do DNS requests.

So just update PlayerNetworkInfo to add a source: 'webtorrent' | 'p2p-media-loader' field, and in p2p-info-button.ts adapt the output depending on the source field: if it is webtorrent, then keep the same output. If it is p2p-media-loader, you can be more precise.