Latest Medium article by Raiden team available here!

Hey everyone,

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latest Medium article is a little more on the techy side. I decided to do a short explanation of everything that might be a bit too technical for an average person so everyone can enjoy the article :).

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First of I would like to point out what is exactly a communication protocol. Definition borrowed from wikipedia says:

In telecommunication, a communication protocol is a system of rules that allow two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchronization of communication and possible error recovery methods.

In other words communication protocol defines how exactly you need to send and receive information in order for everything to work as intended.

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First paragraph uses word transfer. In Raiden glossary it says:

In Raiden a transfer denotes a single hop transfer of tokens, either direct or hash time locked inside a payment channel.

For example if there are 3 nodes in Raiden network in chain like this: A<----->B<----->C (Notice how A and C are not directly connected). A can do a payment to C via mediated transfer, but in order for that to happen 2 transfers need to be executed. First, inside A<----->B payment channel A transfers tokens to B and then inside B<----->C payment channel B transfers tokens to C. These 2 transfers complete a payment. You can see the same explanation in the first figure.

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When talking about non-technical requirement of accessibility author uses NAT as an example. Definition of NAT borrowed from an online source:

Network Address Translation (NAT) is the process where a network device, usually a firewall, assigns a public address to a computer (or group of computers) inside a private network. The main use of NAT is to limit the number of public IP addresses an organization or company must use, for both economy and security purposes.

It is a terrible definition and you probably still don't know what NAT is :). Learning on example is much easier.

So, at home you have a laptop, a mobile phone and a PC all connected to the same home WiFi. When you go online all these devices will appear as they are from the same IP address. The question is:

if every device has the same IP address, how come information from internet always ends up on the correct device?

This is where NAT comes in play. Router (usually functions as NAT in home network) knows what device requested what data from the internet and forwards it to the correct one all the time. Using one IP address for multiple devices is key feature of NAT.

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UDP (User Datagram Protocol) is one of the transport protocols used in the internet. Key features of UDP are that it is very fast but not that reliable.

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TCP is as well a transport protocol used in the internet. Key features of TCP is that it will give it's best to always deliver message, but is not as fast as UDP.

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JSON is just a format for information. In JSON everything has a key and value. One example of JSON message:

{ "username": "BOR4", "password": "Raiden4Life!"}

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TLS or Transport Layer Security is protocol designed to ensure communication security.

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I hope my short explanations help you better understand the article. If you have any more questions, just leave a comment :).