Peer-To-Peer Programming With WCF and .NET Framework 3

06/07/2012 Peer-to-Peer Programming with WCF and .NET Framework 3.5

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Contents

What Is New in .NET Framework 3.5?

Peer-to-Peer Programming with WCF and

.NET Framework 3.5

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Amit Bahree (Avanade UK, www.desigeek.com)

Chris Peiris (Avanade Australia, www.chrispeiris.com)

February 2008

Applies to:

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Windows Vista

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Summary: This article explores peer-to-peer (P2P) concepts and how they are supported inMicrosoft .NET Framework 3.5. It aims to provide an understanding of P2P fundamentals, as wellas show how to use the new features of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Finally, itintroduces the new features of managing P2P networks, including the use of People Near Me andWindows Address Book—new features released as part of Windows Vista. (39 pages)

Introduction

What Is New in .NET Framework 3.5?

What Is Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Computing?

QuickReturnTraderChat Application

P2P Security

QuickReturnSecureTraderChat Sample

Peer Name

People Near Me and Contacts

Working with NetShell

Debugging Tips

Bringing It All Together

Conclusion

References

Introduction

Although the term peer-to-peer (P2P) computing has gained popularity recently, theusefulness of P2P to address business and technical problems remains poorly understood. Inthis article, we explore P2P concepts and how they are supported in Microsoft .NETFramework 3.5. We will also build a sample application to demonstrate the concepts that areinvolved.

Because many of the new features of P2P in .NET Framework 3.5 are available only onWindows Vista, most of the elements that we discuss in this article require Windows Vista.You can run only a handful of things on Microsoft Windows XP; these things are discussed inthe “Debugging Tips” section.

Peer channel (see the “What Is Peer Channel?” section) was originally released as part of .NETFramework 3.0. This was a significant step for the ability to write P2P applications in managedcode. However, there were many basic elements still lacking within the managed stack. The



What Is Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Computing?

only way to get around these basic elements was via the unmanaged C++ stack.

.NET Framework 3.5 adds a couple of new namespaces—System.Net.PeerToPeer andSystem.Net.PeerToPeer.Collaboration—that significantly improve on the availability ofthese basic elements via the managed stack. These new namespaces are part of theSystem.Net.dll assembly and are designed with the P2P application flow (described earlier) andcollaboration in mind. Also, they provide access to the P2P networking infrastructure withoptions to find a P2P, join a mesh, start interaction, and so on. For the first time, a developercan write complete P2P applications that are developed in managed code without having toget into the unmanaged stack in C++.

On the collaboration front, the System.Net.PeerToPeer.Collaboration namespace, which isalso new in .NET Framework 3.5, provides two contexts for collaborating: People Near Me (seethe “P2P Application Flow” section) and Contacts. People Near Me (PNM) is a new feature thatallows applications to discover people on the local subnet and interact with them. TheContacts feature, which is also new, essentially refers to people who are trusted users andhave been added as contacts. Unlike PNM, these contacts do not have to be on the samesubnet for you to be able to interact with them.

P2P computing is a term that has gained a lot of popularity in recent times. Today,organizations and businesses increasingly depend on collaboration between individuals andgroups to perform essential tasks. P2P applications form more ad hoc online groups forbusiness, entertainment, and cultural purposes. As a result, collaboration has become moreessential at an individual level.

Essentially, P2P computing is a set of networked computers that rely on the computing powerand bandwidth of the individual computers on the network, as opposed to the traditionalapproach of relying on a smaller number of more powerful server computers on the network. Acomputer that is connected to a P2P network can be categorized as a node or peer. Thenodes in a P2P network are usually connected on an ad hoc basis. This is where the realpower in a P2P network lies, because the peers are responsible for uploading and downloadingdata among themselves without the need for a server.

Two types of P2P network exist: a pure network and a hybrid network. A pure P2P networkhas no concept of a client or a server; it has only nodes, which act in the capacity of both aserver and a client, as needed. A hybrid P2P network, on the other hand, has a central serverthat keeps track of the various peers on the network. This server responds to requests fromthe peers for information only and does not store any data. The peers are responsible forhosting the information. For example, in a file-sharing P2P application, the files are stored bythe peer, and the server is aware of the files that are stored at each peer.

Most P2P solutions rely on some nonpeer elements in the solution, such as Domain-NameSystem (DNS, used to translate computer host names to IP addresses). Some P2P solutionsalso have the notion of a superpeer, in which other peers are connected to this superpeer in astar-like fashion. Over time, these superpeers could also be used as local servers.

How Are Nodes Identified?

The networks in P2P applications are also called meshes (or, sometimes, a mesh network), inthat they are akin to a wire mesh. Each node in a mesh at a minimum has bidirectionalcommunication capability with its neighbors. A cloud is a mesh network that has a specificaddress scope. These scopes are closely related to IPv6 scopes; the peers in a cloud arethose that can communicate within the same IPv6 scope.

On a mesh, each node must be identified by a unique ID that is usually called a peer ID ormesh ID. To resolve these peer IDs to their corresponding Internet addresses, the Peer NameResolution Protocol (PNRP) is used, instead of DNS. Each peer node, irrespective of type (suchas computer, user, group, device, service, and so on), can have its own peer ID. This list ofIDs is distributed among the peers by using a multilevel cache and referral system that allowsname resolution to scale to billions of IDs, while requiring minimal resources on each node.

An endpoint is defined as a combination of a peer ID, port number, and communicationprotocol. By using an endpoint, a peer can send data between nodes in two ways. One way is



for a peer to send the data to another peer directly. The other way is for a peer to send thedata to all of the other peers on the same mesh, which is also known as flooding. A floodedmessage could arrive at the same peer multiple times via different routes on the mesh.

Peer Names

Peer names can be registered as either secured or unsecured. Unsecured names arerecommended for use in a private network only, because the names are strings and can easilybe spoofed. Secured names, on the other hand, must be registered, and they are protectedwith a certificate and digital signature.

A PNRP ID is 256 bits long; the high-order 128 bits are a hash of the peer name that isassigned to the endpoint, and the lower 128 bits of the PNRP ID are an automaticallygenerated number that is used for service location. The format for the peer name is“Authority.Classifier”. When using a secured network, the Authority is a secure hash (usingSecure Hash Algorithm, or SHA1) of the public key of the peer name in hex. When using anunsecured network, the Authority is the single character 0 (zero). The Classifier is a Unicodestring that is up to 150 characters long and identifies the application. The autogeneratednumber, which is used by the lower 128 bits, uniquely identifies different instances by usingthe classifier that participates in the same mesh. The combination of 256-bit mesh ID and theservice location allow multiple PNRP IDs to be registered from a single computer.

Name Resolution with PNRP

When one peer wants to resolve the name of another peer, it constructs the peer ID (asdiscussed earlier) and tries to find that entry in its cache for the ID. If a match is found, itsends a PNRP request message to the peer and waits for a response. This approach ensuresthat the target peer node, with which another peer is trying to communicate, is active in thecloud. If no match is found, an iterative process is used with the target peer that informs thesender of the peer that is the closest match to the ID that is trying to be resolved. At thisstage, it is up to the original sender to send the same request to the matching peer as theone to which it was pointing. If the new peer to whom the sender was pointed is alsoincorrect, that in turn will return the next-closest matching peer to the sender, and so on.

When a PNRP request message is forwarded, the nodes that are forwarded to and theresponses that are received are both cached. This prevents a situation in which things couldget into an endless loop.

P2P Application Flow

There are three types of P2P application: one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many.When one peer in a mesh wants to communicate with another, it must find the other peer,send an invitation, and create a session between the two. These steps are described asfollows:

Find peer—Essentially, to “talk” to another peer, you must first find it. There are twoways to go about this. The first is to find other peers on the LAN of which you are part.The second is to find peer or peer groups using by PNRP. If you are finding other peerson the LAN, you should use the PNM feature and integrate that into your application.PNM uses WS-Discovery to find users who are signed in.There are many requirements for this to work, such as people discovery, applicationdiscovery, metadata discovery, security, invitation, and so on. We discuss PNM in moredetail later in this article. When using PNRP, on the other hand, it is a server-less nameresolution that can be either on the local network or over the Internet.Send invitation—Invitations are real-time and can go to PNM or peers over theInternet, via either a user message or application data such as mesh name, endpoint,and so on. A listener at the other end detects this incoming invitation request andlaunches the appropriate application.Join mesh—The last step to establish a session is to specify the mesh name andcredentials (if applicable) that one is intending to join.

What Is Peer Channel?



QuickReturnTraderChat Application

Until fairly recently, the P2P networking stack was mostly available only as unmanaged code,and a developer had to use C++ to be able to use any of it. This stack is part of Windows XP,and it has been improved as part of Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows Server 2008.Microsoft also has a managed code implementation for a subset of the functionality that isexposed by the P2P networking stack—called peer channel—and is released as part of WCF.Because peer channel is a “managed stack,” you can use any .NET language—makingimplementation of P2P applications easier and more productive, when compared to unmanagedcode.

A typical WCF channel has two participants—namely, a client and a server. A peer channel, onthe other hand, can have any number of participants. A message that is sent by oneparticipant will be received by all other participants on the channel. However, certainmechanisms in the peer channel allow you to send a message to only part of the mesh,instead of the whole mesh.

To resolve the addresses of a node in a peer-channel mesh, you can use either PNRP or acustom resolver. When a node is resolved, that target node can either accept or decline theconnection. If the connection is accepted by the target node, it sends it a welcome messagethat will contain, among other things, the list of other nodes that are part of the mesh. If theconnection is refused, the existing node sends the prospective node a refusal message thatcontains the reason for the refusal and a list of the addresses of the other nodes in the mesh.

In WCF, a node that will be part of a mesh is defined via the PeerNode class in yourapplication. The endpoint address for that node is defined via the PeerNodeAddress class(which internally implements the EndpointAddress class). The number of neighbors of eachnode dictates the overall structure of a peer-channel mesh that is actively maintained, whichresults in an evenly distributed mesh. For example, a node in the mesh tries to maintainbetween two to seven connections to its neighbors. Although an ideal state for the node is tohave three connections, it will accept up to seven connections. As soon as a node hasreached that threshold, it will start refusing any new connections. If a node loses all of itsneighbors, it will enter a maintenance cycle in which it tries to acquire new neighbors to getto its optimum state of three connections. Note that you cannot change or configure eitherthe thresholds or the underlying mesh, because the peer channel owns and maintains this.

The peer channel also tries to improve efficiency by limiting communication within the mesh bykeeping repetitive messages passed to a minimum. When a node sends a message to themesh, it sends it to the neighbors to which it is connected. These neighbors, in turn, inspectthe message and then forward it to their neighbors; but they do not forward it to the neighborfrom whom they got the message to start. In addition, a connection to a neighbor might beterminated if it keeps trying to resend a message that has been processed previously.Internally, each node keeps a local cache of the WS-Addressing message ID and the ID of theneighbor that delivered that message. This allows an optimized mesh network that does notwaste resources with repeating data.

A node can send messages to a subset of the mesh by assigning a hop count to the message.A hop count keeps a count of the number of nodes to which a message has been forwarded.This count is expressed as an integer within the message header and is decremented witheach hop until it reaches a value of zero, after which it is not forwarded.

To get a better understanding of how everything comes together with the peer channel, let usstart with a simple application that is called QuickReturnTraderChat. We have a few traderswho are spread across a stock exchange and need the ability to chat with each other. Theexchange, being a secure environment, does not allow any access to IM clients and wants touse the QuickReturnTraderChat application to allow talking to each other. This applicationallows more than one trader to broadcast a message to the other traders—similar to an IRCchannel. You will look first at the unsecured version of this sample, and then later make itsecure, so that no one else can eavesdrop on the conversation.

The application is simple and is implemented as a Windows application that contains one form.For clarity, we will not show the Windows Form boilerplate code, so that you can concentrateon the peer-channel aspects.



Message Interface

A peer-channel service contract is just a WCF service contract in which theOperationContract attribute is defined in one way, as shown in Listing 1. The interface iscalled IQuickReturnTraderChat and has only one operation, which is called “Say” andaccepts two parameters: user and message.

Listing 1. IQuickReturnTraderChat service contract

Service Configuration

Listing 2 shows the service side of the configuration. This application listens at thenet.p2p://QuickReturnTraderChat address. Being a P2P application, its binding is set tonetPeerTcpBinding and the contract for the endpoint is set toQuickReturnTraderChat.IQuickReturnTraderChat (following the namespace.interfaceformat). The binding configuration is intentionally kept separate and is shown later in Listing 3.

Listing 2. Service configuration

Binding-Configuration File

As we stated earlier, a P2P application’s binding is set to netPeerTcpBinding, and theresolver mode is set to PNRP. Because this application is not secure, we have the securitymode switched off by setting it to None.

[ServiceContract()]public interface IQuickReturnTraderChat{ [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void Say(string user, string message);}

<service name="QuickReturnTraderChat.Main"> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="net.p2p://QuickReturnTraderChat"/> </baseAddresses> </host>

<endpoint name="QuickTraderChat" address="" binding="netPeerTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BindingUnsecure" contract="QuickReturnTraderChat.IQuickReturnTraderChat" /></service>

<bindings> <netPeerTcpBinding> <binding name="BindingUnsecure"> <security mode="None"/> <resolver mode="Pnrp"/> </binding> </netPeerTcpBinding></bindings>



Listing 3. Binding configuration

Main Application

The main application that is shown in Figure 1 consists of a Windows Form that has two textboxes: one for the message that is being sent (called textBoxMessage), and one to showthe conversation (called textBoxChat). The form contains also one button (calledbuttonSend).

Figure 1. QuickReturnTraderChat application

The class that implements the Windows Form is called Main and is implemented as is shown inListing 4. This form inherits from the .NET Form class and also implements theIQuickReturnTraderChat interface that was defined earlier. Because this is a WCF Service,the class is decorated with the ServiceBehavior attribute—the InstanceContextModecontrolling when a new Service object should be created. In our case, we want this tobehave as a singleton; as a result, the InstanceContextMode is set to Single.

Listing 4. Service-host class definition

As shown in Listing 5, the Main class implements two methods—StartService andStopService—that start and stop, respectively, the service host (as the names suggest).The Main class also has a few member variables that expose the Channel, ServiceHost, andChannelFactory.

[ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single)]public partial class Main : Form, IQuickReturnTraderChat{}

IQuickReturnTraderChat channel;ServiceHost host = null;ChannelFactory<IQuickReturnTraderChat> channelFactory = null;string userID = "";private void StartService(){ //Instantiate new ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(this);



Listing 5. Service-host implementation

IQuickReturnTraderChat Implementation (the Receiver)

We have both the service side and the receiver side of things in the same class. Theconfiguration for the receiver is shown in Listing 6; it is quite similar to the senderconfiguration and uses the same binding.

Listing 6. Receiver configuration

The receiver here is fairly simple; all it does is echo out the message to the chat text box onthe Windows Form, as shown in Listing 7.

Listing 7. Receiver implementation

Invoking the Service

The service is invoked in the Click event of the Send button, as shown in Listing 8. Thesecond line is where we invoke service. If you recall, channel is of typeIQuickReturnTraderChat and is defined in the Main class (shown in Listing 4).

//Open ServiceHost host.Open(); //Create a ChannelFactory and load the configuration setting channelFactory = new ChannelFactory<IQuickReturnTraderChat> ("QuickTraderChatEndpoint"); channel = channelFactory.CreateChannel(); //Lets others know that someone new has joined channel.Say("Admin", "*** New User " + userID + " Joined ****" + Environment.NewLine);}private void StopService(){ if (host != null) { channel.Say("Admin", "*** User " + userID + " Leaving ****" + Environment.NewLine); if (host.State != CommunicationState.Closed) { channelFactory.Close(); host.Close(); } }}

<client> <endpoint name="QuickTraderChatEndpoint" address="net.p2p://QuickReturnTraderChat" binding="netPeerTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BindingUnsecure" contract="QuickReturnTraderChat.IQuickReturnTraderChat"/>

void IQuickReturnTraderChat.Say(string user, string message){ textBoxChat.Text += user + " says: " + message;}



P2P Security

Listing 8. Service invocation

As you can see, creating a simple P2P application by using WCF is fairly trivial, and you do notneed to do anything with the Windows P2P Networking stack. Our QuickReturnTraderChatapplication has been kept fairly simple, to show you the concept and how to implement a P2Papplication.

Security in a P2P network is an interesting challenge. As far as an application is concerned,when securing a P2P network, there are two points of interest. Firstly, only authorized usersget on the network. Secondly, the message that you received originated from a known andtrusted source, and the message itself has not been tampered with during transmission.

The first aspect is relatively easy to achieve: When a new application or user logs on to themesh, that application or user can be challenged to authenticate before being allowed to jointhe mesh. The second aspect is a little more difficult, because you are not directly connectedto another peer in the mesh. However, with WCF, this is relatively straightforward, becausethe NetPeerTcpBinding class exposes the PeerSecuritySettings class via the Securityproperty.

So, how does it all come together with WCF? For OutputChannels, which reside on the sender,each message that is sent is signed by using a certificate; and all messages, before beingsent to an application, are validated for this credential. The certificate that is needed isprovided by using the PeerCredential.Certificate property. The validation that was statedearlier can be implemented via an instance of the X509CertificateValidator class, which isprovided as part of the PeerCredential.MessageSenderAuthentication property. When themessage arrives on the other end, the peer channel ensures the validity of the messagebefore forwarding it up the chain to the application.

Peer-Channel Security

You specify the security settings for the peer channel by using the Security property, whichis available on the NetPeerTcpBinding class. This property operates like any other standardbinding in WCF. You can apply four types of security at this level, and they are exposed viathe Mode property; the underlying class is in the PeerSecuritySettings class. These fouroptions for security are the following:

None—No security is required.Transport—No message security is implemented; only neighbor-to-neighbor security isrequired.Message—Only message authentication is required when communicating over an openchannel.TransportWithMessageCredential—This is essentially a combination of Transport andMessage (defined previously). It would require that the message be secure and thatauthentication be required over secure neighbor-to-neighbor channels.

Note: If security is enabled on the binding and is set to Message orTransportWithMessageCredential, messages that pass through both on the outbound and onthe inbound must be secured by using X509Certificate.

The PeerChannel class provides two ways to authenticate two peers, which are configuredby using the PeerTransportSecurityElement.CredentialType property. This is eitherPassword or Certificate. When this is set to Password, every peer needs a password to

private void buttonSend_Click(object sender, EventArgs e){ string temp = textBoxMessage.Text + Environment.NewLine; //Invoke the Service channel.Say(userID, temp); textBoxMessage.Clear();}



QuickReturnSecureTraderChat Sample

connect. The owner of the mesh is responsible for setting the password initially andcommunicating it to peers whom you will allow to join the mesh. On the other hand, when thisis set to Certificate, authentication is based on X509Certificate.

When an application initiates a peer-channel instance, an instance of the peer-channeltransport manager is started. The transport manager resolves the endpoint address of therequested peers and the mesh. PNRP acts as the default resolver for this; however, you canchoose to implement a custom resolver, too. As soon as the address has been resolved, thetransport manager initiates a connection request to each of the peers.

Password-Based Authentication

When using the password-based authentication, the steps that are used to initiate aconnection with the transport manager are the same. The main difference is that when a peerinitiates a connection request, the link between the two peers is over a SSL connection. Also,as the first step after initiating connection between the two peers, the initiator peer will senda custom handshake message that authenticates the password. If the responder peer issatisfied with this, it accepts the connection and sends a similar response to the originatingpeer. If the initiator peer is satisfied with this, the connection is established; if not, theconnection is abandoned.

This handshake must contain some metadata for it to function. The first piece of themetadata is the certificate with which the secure connection is established; the secondmetadata is the password with which the handshake is established. The PeerCredential classis exposed as the Peer property on the ChannelFactory.Credentials property. This isdemonstrated in the secure version of the chat sample that was discussed earlier in thearticle. This secure version is called QuickReturnSecureTraderChat (you’ll see it a bit later).

Certificate-Based Authentication

When using the certificate-based authentication mode, the application has control of theauthentication process, compared to the WCF runtime. There is no custom handshakeinvolved; instead, the transport manager, after receiving the certificate, passes that on tothe application to authenticate. To get this functionality, the application must provide acouple of certificates. The first certificate establishes the SSL connection and the identitybetween the peers. The second certificate provides a concrete implementation by theapplication for the abstract X509CertificateValidator class. This is also demonstrated in thesecure version of the chat sample (you’ll see it a bit later).

Message Security

If you are interested in securing the message itself to ensure that it has not been tamperedwith during transmission, you must use the Message security option. Effectively, when this isrequested, the peer channel on every outbound message includes a signature; vice versa, onevery inbound message, it validates the signature. The signature is validated against the samecertificate (without the specific private keys, of course). The signatures that are added tothe message are compatible with all of the peers on the mesh.

A peer channel can verify signatures that are specific to the application through a “hook” thatallows you to participate in its signature-verification routine. This hook is in a concreteimplementation of the abstract X509CertificateValidator class. This allows you to have anycriteria for the pass or fail validation.

QuickReturnSecureTraderChat essentially is the same as the chat application that wasdiscussed earlier, with the addition of security. For the sake of simplicity, this wasimplemented as a separate solution. In the real world, you would probably read the securityinformation via a configuration setting; based on that, you would either enable or disable thesecurity options. As discussed earlier, security can be set by using either a password or anX509 certificate. For our sample here, we will use a password; however, we will show howeasy it is to change this to use a certificate.



Service Configuration

The service side of the configuration that is shown in Listing 9 is very similar to the serviceconfiguration that was used in the earlier example. While the address and the namespace havebeen updated, the real configuration change is the use of a different binding type for thebindingConfiguration parameter.

Listing 9. Service configuration

Binding Configuration

The updated binding configuration that is used by both the host and the client in our exampleis called BindingSecurePassword. The main difference between this and the previousexample is the addition of the security details, as shown in Listing 10. As you can see, wehave the security mode set to Transport and the type set to Password.

Listing 10. Secure binding configuration

Main Application

The main application is the same as shown in Figure 1. The only difference between this andthe earlier example is the addition of a new member variable to hold the password, which isread from the app.config file.

Note: We recommend that you do not save the password in the app.config file in clear text,because anyone can open it and read the password. We recommend that you save thepassword in an encrypted storage, or accept the password from the user at run time. To holdthe password in memory, use the SecureString class that was introduced in .NET Framework2.0.

The updated member variable that is used by the solution is shown in Listing 11. The channelis of type IQuickReturnTraderChat; this is the contract that was implemented by theservice. The members that are named host and channelFactory are the service host and thechannel factory, respectively. The two string variables respectively store the user andpassword, which are read from the app.config file by usingConfigurationManager.AppSettings in the constructor for our Main class.

<service name="QuickReturnSecureTraderChat.Main"> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="net.p2p://QuickReturnSecureTraderChat"/> </baseAddresses> </host> <endpoint name="QuickTraderChatSecurePasswordEndPoint" address="" binding="netPeerTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BindingSecurePassword" contract="QuickReturnSecureTraderChat.IQuickReturnTraderChat" /></service>

<binding name="BindingSecurePassword"> <security mode="Transport"> <transport credentialType="Password"/> </security> <resolver mode="Pnrp"/></binding>



Peer Name

Listing 11. Member-variable list

The StartService method in the Main class has been updated slightly, as shown in Listing 12.This now uses a different endpoint configuration file and sets the password for both the hostand the channel. The StopService method remains the same as earlier, and it is not listedagain here. As shown in Listing 12, the password for both the host and the ChannelFactory isset via the Credentials.Peer.MeshPassword property. The binding configuration has beenupdated and is read from QuickTraderChatSecurePasswordEndPoint.

Listing 12. Service-host implementation

One interesting behavior with the security is that if you have a set of peers listening on thesame endpoint, but with different passwords, they will be isolated from each other. Forexample, say that you have four users—User1, User2, User3, and User4. User1 and User2 arechatting and connected to the mesh by using “password1”. If User3 and User4 start chattingwith another password—say, “password2”—even though all four users are on the mesh andlistening on the same endpoint, the messages between User1 and User2 cannot be seen byUsers3 and User4, and vice versa.

To use an X509 certificate instead of a password to secure a mesh, set the transportcredentialType in the binding to Certificate, and set the Credentials.Peer.Certificateproperty to Certificate on both the host and the client.

A peer, as we know, is the most basic building block of a P2P network and the final endpointof the communication. A peer can be an application, computer, Windows service, and so on. Apeer is defined by using the PeerName class, and, as we know, it can be either secure orunsecure.

Creating

Creating a new peer is quite straightforward by using the PeerName class. Listing 13 shows

IQuickReturnTraderChat channel;ServiceHost host = null;ChannelFactory<IQuickReturnTraderChat> channelFactory = null;string userID = "";string password = null;

private void StartService(){ //Instantiate new ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(this); //Set the password host.Credentials.Peer.MeshPassword = password; //Open ServiceHost host.Open(); //Create a ChannelFactory and load the configuration setting channelFactory = new ChannelFactory<IQuickReturnTraderChat> ("QuickTraderChatSecurePasswordEndPoint"); //Set the password for the ChannelFactory channelFactory.Credentials.Peer.MeshPassword = password; //Create the Channel channel = channelFactory.CreateChannel(); //Lets others know that someone new has joined channel.Say("Admin", "*** New User " + userID + " Joined ****" + Environment.NewLine);}



an example of how to define both an unsecure peer and a secure peer. The PeerName classhas three overloaded constructors; however, to create a new instance of a fully qualifiedpeer, the third overload that accepts two parameters is the best option. The first parameter isthe classifier, and the second parameter is the secure or unsecure peer.

Listing 13. Peer definition

A classifier is a string that refers to the peer name and does not guarantee uniqueness; thatis, you can have more than one peer in the cloud with the same classifier. A peer name iscase-sensitive. A secure peer automatically creates a 40-character-long hex string as theauthority, which makes it difficult to spoof the peer. The authority for an unsecure peer isalways set to 0 (zero). The authority for a peer can be retrieved via the Authority property.

Publishing

Creating a peer by itself is quite meaningless, so that the next logical step is to register (orpublish) a peer and associate it with a cloud. A peer must be part of a cloud that will thenenable it to communicate with other peers within the cloud. A cloud is no more than acollection of peers and is uniquely identified with a name. Clouds are closely tied to a networkinterface. In addition to the Global cloud, of which there is only one, each network card on acomputer would have a cloud attached to it. For example, if you have a laptop that has awired and a wireless network connection, there will be three clouds available: Global, and onefor each of the network connections.

Registering a peer is done by using the PeerNameRegisteration class, which has a fewoverloaded constructors. The three basic steps are as follows:

1. Peer that you are trying to register2. TCP port over which the peer will listen3. Endpoint that is affiliated with the peer

You can use the EndPointCollection property of the PeerNameRegisteration class to add anew endpoint, which expects an IPEndPoint object. However, in most cases, we don’t wantto add a new endpoint explicitly; instead, we want to use the address that is assigned to thelocal computer that hosts the peer. To do so, we use the UseAutoEndPointSelectionproperty; setting it to True will automatically pick up the endpoints when registering thepeers. Listing 14 shows how to register the two peers that we had defined earlier.

Listing 14. Peer registration

The Start method registers the peer on the cloud. If a specific cloud is not specified via theCloud property, the peer is registered on all of the clouds that are available to the client. Bydefault, the port for PeerNameRegisteration is 0 (zero) and theUseAutoEndPointSelection property is set to True. Thus, the code in Listing 14 and Listing15 are equivalent.

PeerName myPeer = new PeerName("MyUnsecurePeer",PeerNameType. Unsecured);PeerName mySecurePeer = new PeerName("MySecurePeer", PeerNameType.Secured);

PeerNameRegistration registeration = new PeerNameRegistration(myPeer,3030);registeration.UseAutoEndPointSelection = true; registeration.Start();

PeerNameRegistration registeration = new PeerNameRegistration();



Listing 15. Peer registration

It is also possible to associate one peer with multiple PeerNameRegisteration objects. If thepeer is not secure, it can be registered in the same cloud multiple times, as long as eachregistration is from a different process on the operating system. On the other hand, if a peeris secure, every instance of the peer is registered in a different cloud. A peer that isregistered in a cloud is identified via a PeerRecord object that also encapsulates all of therelevant details.

Resolving

The final logical step after creating and publishing a peer is resolving a peer. What good is itto publish something to the cloud if another peer cannot find you? We use thePeerNameResolver class to resolve for a specific peer in a given cloud. ThePeerNameResolver can resolve a peer to either a PeerRecord or a cloud, depending on theparameters that are passed. The resolution process finishes either when the maximum numberof record entries for the PeerRecordCollection is reached or when it has reached the end ofvarious clouds.

The PeerNameResolver class exposes an overloaded method that is called Resolve and isused to resolve a given peer synchronously. The scope of what will be resolved depends onthe parameters that are passed. Also, because we cannot resolve a peer from the sameprocess that published it, we have a simple console application that registers a secure peerand an unsecure peer on a cloud, as shown in Listing 16.

Listing 16. Secure and unsecure peers registered

Listing 17 shows us how to try to resolve for a peer that is called MySecurePeer. The Resolvemethod returns a collection of type PeerNameRecordCollection through which we iterate.Listing 18 shows the result of this when running on a computer that has three network cards.

registeration.PeerName = myPeer;registeration.Port = 3030;registeration.Start();

static void Main(string[] args){ PeerName myPeer = new PeerName("MyUnsecurePeer", PeerNameType.Unsecured); PeerName mySecurePeer = new PeerName("MySecurePeer", PeerNameType.Secured); PeerNameRegistration registeration = new PeerNameRegistration(myPeer, 3030); PeerNameRegistration registeration2 = new PeerNameRegistration(mySecurePeer, 3030); registeration.Start(); registeration2.Start();

Console.WriteLine("Registeration of Peer {0} comeplete with the hostname {1}.", myPeer.ToString(), myPeer.PeerHostName); Console.WriteLine("Registeration of Peer {0} comeplete with the hostname {1}.", mySecurePeer.ToString(), myPeer.PeerHostName);

Console.WriteLine("Press any key to continue..."); Console.ReadKey();

registeration.Stop(); registeration2.Stop();}



Listing 17. Resolving a peer on a cloud

Because the peer that we are resolving is secure, we see a random 40-character hex string asthe authority in the peer. The peer was originally published on all available networkconnections (we did not limit the scope and use the default). The computer on which thiscode was executed had three network cards; hence, we see four result sets—one for eachnetwork adapter and the Global cloud. On the network adapters that have both IPv4 and IPv6,you see two endpoints.

Listing 18. Peer-resolution result

Clouds

Clouds are tightly integrated with the network interfaces on a computer. If there are nnetwork interfaces, we will get n+1 clouds—one LinkLocal for every network interface, andone Global cloud. The System.Net.PeerToPeer namespace contains a static class that iscalled Cloud and can be used to interact with the cloud of a specific peer. This class has twostatic members—GetAvailableClouds and GetCloudByName—that return aCloudCollection that contains all of the known clouds or the specific cloud, respectively. TheCloud class has a couple of interesting fields—namely, AllLinkLocal and Available.

AllLinkLocal—Returns a reference to a single cloud that represents all of the link-localclouds in which the peer is currently participatingAvailable—Returns a reference to a single cloud that represents all of the clouds inwhich the peer is currently participating

Consider Listing 19, which lists all of the clouds and writes the result to the console. Theresult of this is shown in Listing 20.

PeerName myPeer = new PeerName("MySecurePeer", PeerNameType.Secured);PeerNameResolver resolver = new PeerNameResolver(); PeerNameRecordCollection results = resolver.Resolve(myPeer);

Console.WriteLine("{0} Peers Found:", results.Count.ToString());int i = 1;

foreach (PeerNameRecord peer in results){ Console.WriteLine("{0} Peer:{1}", i++, peer.PeerName.ToString()); foreach (IPEndPoint ip in peer.EndPointCollection) { Console.WriteLine("\t Endpoint: {0}", ip.ToString()); }}

4 Peers Found:1 Peer:449dc64ecb28347e9f7ce600dba063662f2eb0e7.MySecurePeer Endpoint: fe80::8861:85c7:d256:ae5a%15:3030 Endpoint: 192.168.100.1:30302 Peer:449dc64ecb28347e9f7ce600dba063662f2eb0e7.MySecurePeer Endpoint: 5.17.198.73:30303 Peer:449dc64ecb28347e9f7ce600dba063662f2eb0e7.MySecurePeer Endpoint: fe80::9518:2d5d:6699:61b6%9:3030 Endpoint: 169.254.97.182:30304 Peer:449dc64ecb28347e9f7ce600dba063662f2eb0e7.MySecurePeer Endpoint: fe80::56d:e1b3:9:212d%13:3030 Endpoint: 192.168.62.1:3030



People Near Me and Contacts

Listing 19. List all available clouds

Listing 20. List of available clouds

People Near Me (PNM) is a new feature of Windows Vista, and provides a standard set of APIsthat allow one to write applications that can interact and collaborate with other users on thelocal subnet. PNM provides four key services—Discover, Interact, Collaborate, Publish—thatenable a user to share objects and applications, subscribe to events, and send invites forothers to join. This section covers in detail only the Discover and Interact services of PNM.

Discover

Internally, PNM uses Web discovery to publish various details, such as name, computer name,IP address, port, and so on. A user is not signed in automatically; instead, a user signs in viathe Control Panel. After having done so, a user can choose the option to sign in automaticallywhenever Windows starts.

Figure 2 and Figure 3 show the PNM icon when a user is signed in and signed out,respectively.

Figure 2. PNM, signed in

Figure 3. PNM, signed out

As shown in Figure 4, the Settings tab of PNM allows a user to sign in and out of PNR and

CloudCollection clouds = Cloud.GetAvailableClouds();Console.WriteLine("{0} clouds found.",clouds.Count);int i = 1;foreach (Cloud someCloud in clouds){ Console.WriteLine("{0}: Name:{1}", i++, someCloud.Name); Console.WriteLine("\tScope ID:{0}, Scope:{1}", someCloud.ScopeId,someCloud.Scope);}

5 clouds found.1: Name:Global_ Scope ID:0, Scope:Global2: Name:LinkLocal_ff00::%15/8 Scope ID:15, Scope:LinkLocal3: Name:LinkLocal_ff00::%13/8 Scope ID:13, Scope:LinkLocal4: Name:LinkLocal_ff00::%8/8 Scope ID:8, Scope:LinkLocal5: Name:LinkLocal_ff00::%9/8 Scope ID:9, Scope:LinkLocal



change settings, such as the friendly name that others will see, which profile of users onewould want to accept invitations from, and so on.

Figure 4. People Near Me options

A significant portion of the PNM functionality is provided by a static class that is calledPeerCollaboration and can be found in the System.Net.PeerToPeer.Collaborationnamespace. This class allows you to interact with the collaboration infrastructure, whichenables one to sign in, sign out, register and unregister applications, and so on.PeerCollaboration has a static method that is called SignIn and with which one can sign into the collaboration infrastructure, as shown in Listing 21. Note that you must have IPv6installed for this to work; otherwise, you will get a PeerToPeerException that shows themessage, “The sign-in succeeded, but there are no IPv6 addresses available at this time.”

Each PNM is represented by the PeerNearMe class, which exposes all of the details for apeer, such as the endpoints at which they can be reached, nickname, whether they areonline, and so on. After you have signed in, you can try to find any peers that are within thePNM infrastructure via the GetPeersNearMe method. This returns a collection ofPeerNearMe that represents the peers who are signed-in in the same local subnet.

Listing 21. Sign in to collaboration

Contacts

The other option for discovering people is to search in the Windows Address Book (WAB). Theentries that are saved in the WAB are called as Contacts and enable interaction beyond thelocal subnet. The WAB is a new feature of Windows Vista. You can find the WAB saved as“Contacts”; it is usually stored in C:\Users\<user-name>\Contacts.

The WAB features are exposed via a class that is called ContactManager and can be

PeerCollaboration.SignIn(PeerScope.All);PeerNearMeCollection peers = PeerCollaboration.GetPeersNearMe();Console.WriteLine("{0} peers found.", peers.Count);



retrieved via the PeerCollaboration class. The ContactManager class exposes a methodthat is called GetContacts and returns a collection of PeerContacts that are available in thesigned-in scope, as shown in the following snippet:

You can add a found peer to your address book by using the AddToContactManager()method on the PeerContact. If that peer already exists as a contact, you will get aPeerToPeerException that shows the message, “Peer collaboration add contact failed. Contactalready exists in contact manager.”

Listing 22 shows the code and the output when there is one more peer called “Amit2” on thesubnet. Figure 5 shows what the contact looks like when it is added to the WAB.

Listing 22. Peers found on the subnet

Figure 5. Contact added to Windows Address Book

Interact

To interact with another peer by using some application (typically, a line-of-business (LOB)application), the same application must be installed on both of the computers—in other words,on yours and on the peer with whom you are planning to interact. Furthermore, this

ContactManager contactMgr = PeerCollaboration.ContactManager;PeerContactCollection contacts = contactMgr.GetContacts();

PeerNearMeCollection peers = PeerCollaboration.GetPeersNearMe();Console.WriteLine("{0} peers found.", peers.Count);foreach (PeerNearMe peer in peers){ PeerContact contact = peer.AddToContactManager(); Console.WriteLine("Peer {0} is online:{1} with {2} endpoints", peer.Nickname, peer.IsOnline, peer.PeerEndPoints.Count);}

1 peers found.1: Peer Amit2 is online:True with 1 endpoints



application must be installed on both the computers with the same GUID and must beregistered with the peer-collaboration infrastructure as one of the applications that isavailable for interaction. To find the endpoint at which an application can be reached, you canuse the EndPoint property of the PeerNearMe class. This property returns an IPEndPointobject.

The invitation that a user sends to a peer to launch a certain application contains an XMLpayload and is sent over a secure connection. The XML payload consists of the following:

A unique GUID that identifies the applicationA user-defined message that is displayed to the peer who receives the invitationAdditional data that essentially is a placeholder in which to put any blob of data thatthe target application might expect (for example, the endpoint details of the peer whosends the invitation)

Figure 6 shows an example of what the invitation looks like on the target computer when oneis inviting to launch Windows Meeting Space. This request is from an unknown peer. (If thiswere from a known contact—that is, part of WAB—the request would look like what is shownin Figure 8.)

Figure 6. Unknown-peer invitation

Clicking the View button shows the details of the invitation that is shown in Figure 7. If youaccept the invitation, the application will launch. At this point, the peer infrastructure is nolonger part of the process; instead, the applications that are on both ends are communicatingby using regular communication protocols, such as TCP, HTTP, and so on.

Figure 7. Unknown Windows Meeting Space invitation details

The GetLocalRegisteredApplications method on the PeerCollaboration class returns acollection of type PeerApplications that represents all of the applications that are registeredon the local computer. By default, this method returns the applications that are registered forall users; however, if you want to restrict that to the logged-on user, you can use theoverloaded method that accepts a PeerApplicationRegisterationType.

Listing 23 shows a sample listing of the applications. It is this list of applications that is



available for a peer to use.

Listing 23. Iterating through all available peer applications

You use the Invite() method on the PeerNearMe class to invite a selected peer to launchthe application. This method takes three parameters: the application that is to be launched, amessage for the user, and some data (as shown in Listing 24). The data parameter is specificfor each application; based on its implementation, only the application knows what to expect.In many cases, it would contain your endpoint address, so that the application knows theaddress to which to “talk back.” The Invite() method returns a PeerInvitationReponse andcan be one of the following options:

DeclinedAcceptedExpired

Listing 24. Inviting a peer to launch an application

Figure 8 shows an invitation from a trusted contact to launch Windows Meeting Space.Clicking on the View button shows you the details of the invitation that is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 8. Known-peer invitation

PeerApplicationCollection apps = PeerCollaboration.GetLocalRegisteredApplications();int i = 1;Console.WriteLine("{0} Applications Found:", apps.Count);foreach (PeerApplication someApp in apps){ Console.WriteLine("\t{0}: ID:{1}", i, someApp.Id); Console.WriteLine("\t\tDesc:{0}", someApp.Description); Console.WriteLine("\t\tPath:{0}", someApp.Path); Console.WriteLine("\t\tArguments:{0}", someApp.CommandLineArgs);}

PeerInvitationResponse response = peer.Invite(myApp, "Want to work on this P2P article together?", null);if (response.PeerInvitationResponseType != PeerInvitationResponseType.Accepted) MessageBox.Show(peer.Nickname + " declined the request.");



Figure 9. Known Windows Meeting Space invitation details

Creating Your PeerApplication

A PeerApplication can be any application that can run on Windows. The only differencebetween a regular application and a peer application is that the latter is registered as availableon the P2P infrastructure. Typically, an application is registered during the installation process.

Registering a new application manually or programmatically is fairly straightforward. The firststep is to create a new instance of the PeerApplication class, and the second step is toregister that instance on the P2P infrastructure. We need a unique ID (represented by a GUID)to identify this application. This ID must be the same on all of the computers on which thisapplication will be installed and is used to identify the application that is to be launched on thetarget computer.

In addition to the path of the executable and a human-readable description, we also mustassign a scope to the application. Typically, this scope is dictated by the design of theapplication and what it is supposed to be doing.

Listing 25 shows an example of creating a new PeerApplication that configures MicrosoftNotepad to be available as part of the P2P infrastructure.

Listing 25. Creating a new PeerApplication

The third step is to register the application on the P2P infrastructure by using theRegisterApplication method on the PeerCollaboration class. This accepts two parameters:the application that you want to register, and the scope of the users for which the applicationis available (that is, the currently logged-on user or All Users). A PeerToPeerException isthrown if the registration fails.

PeerApplication myApplication = new PeerApplication();myApplication.Description = "My Test Application";myApplication.Id = new Guid("B0C29122-398A-4416-8AA7-0A8A9AE82B23");myApplication.Path = @"c:\windows\notepad.exe";myApplication.PeerScope = PeerScope.All;

PeerCollaboration.RegisterApplication(myApplication, PeerApplicationRegistrationType.CurrentUser);



The same application can be registered many times, as long as a unique ID is associated witheach registration. For example, Listing 26 shows a sample output of all of the locally registeredpeer applications. Note that we have Notepad registered twice, with two different IDs.

Listing 26. Sample output of locally registered applications

If you are trying to register an application that will be available for All Users, the process thatis executing this requires administrator privileges, because this writes to the registry. If youdon’t run this with elevated privileges, the registration will fail and throw aPeerToPeerException that shows the message, “Peer collaboration register application failed.”However, if you examine the inner exception, you see the more meaningful message of“Access Denied.” Of course, if you have User Account Control (UAC) switched off, you alreadyare running with administrator privileges, and the registration will succeed.

As mentioned earlier, an application that is designed to be invoked over a peer infrastructure(such as Windows Meeting Space) typically would be registered during the installation processof that application. If you want to register this manually or if you are creating the setup (forexample, by using the Setup and Deployment project in Microsoft Visual Studio or WiX), youmust create an entry in the following Windows registry hives, depending on the scope. If theapplication is available for All Users, you must register it in the HKLM hive. If the application isavailable only for the current user, you must use the HKCU hive.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\PeerNet\AppInvite\MyApplicationsHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\PeerNet\AppInvite\MyApplications

Each application is a new key that consists of the application’s ID and the structure, as shownin the following snippet and in Figure 10:

3 Applications Found: 1: ID:81facd1e-c761-4330-b56c-a7286a3424aa Desc:Amit Test Application Path:c:\windows\notepad.exe Arguments: 1: ID:b0c29122-398a-4416-8aa7-0a8a9ae82b23 Desc:Amit Test Application Path:c:\windows\notepad.exe Arguments: 1: ID:153999c2-cec7-4233-8599-819dc4840a0c Desc:Windows Meeting Space Path:C:\Program Files\Windows Collaboration\WinCollab.exe Arguments:/e

PeerCollaboration.RegisterApplication(myApplication, PeerApplicationRegistrationType.AllUsers);

"CommandLineArgs"="""PublicationScope"=dword:00000002"Filename"="C:\\Windows\\notepad.exe""Description"="Some App"



Figure 10. Registry details of an application registered on the peer infrastructure

If you accidentally use the same ID for two different applications, each of which is in adifferent scope (that is, Local User and All Users), the application that is found in Local Usertakes precedence. For example, if the 81facd1e-c761-4330-b56c-a7286a3424aa key is usedto register both Notepad and UltraEdit in the All Users and Current User scopes, respectively,when iterating through the available list of registered applications, you will find only thereference to UltraEdit, because that takes precedence over the reference to Notepad.

If you tried to register an application by using an existing ID in the same scope, you will getan exception that says that the application was already registered. Also, if the application onthe target system was not found (for example, there might be a typing error in the path of theexecutable), you will get an “Unable to start the program” error message, as shown in Figure11.

Figure 11. Peer application not found

If your peer application needs some metadata at startup—such as how is it launched, or toread any initial data such as any LOB-specific details or endpoint details, and so on—you mustuse the ApplicationLaunchInfo method on the PeerCollaboration class to get thosedetails. One of the parameters on the Invite() method (shown in Listing 24) accepts thismetadata and passes it through. Listing 27 shows an example of this.

Listing 27. Finding out application-launch details

PeerApplicationLaunchInfo launchInfo = PeerCollaboration.ApplicationLaunchInfo;if (launchInfo != null){ StringBuilder s = new StringBuilder(); s.Append("Message:" + launchInfo.Message + Environment.NewLine); s.Append("PeerApplication:" + launchInfo.PeerApplication.ToString() + Environment.NewLine); s.Append("Peer Contact:" + launchInfo.PeerContact.ToString() + Environment.NewLine); s.Append(launchInfo.ToString()); MessageBox.Show(s.ToString());}



Working with NetShell

If you want to “respect” the context of a peer and get its presence information, based onwhich you want to make some business decision (such as to initiate a session with anotherpeer, if it is busy), use the LocalPresenceInfo property that is exposed by thePeerCollaboration class. This returns an object of type PeerPresenceInfo that exposes thePeerPresenceStatus enumeration.

NetShell, also known as netsh, is an indispensable command-line utility for anyone who workswith P2P. Although netsh is primarily aimed at administrators, allowing them to administernetwork services, it is equally useful to a developer. To start netsh, open a command prompt,and then type netsh.

Note: NetShell is available only when the P2P networking option is installed in Windows XP. Bydefault, NetShell is installed on Windows Vista; however, for it to work, you must allow it asan exception in the firewall.

The commands in netsh work with the concept of a “context” that determines the networkingaspect within which you want to operate and accumulates various possible commands in thatcontext. In most situations, you would switch to some context for the specific operation inwhich you are interested. Contexts can have subcontexts, and these, in turn, can havefurther subcontexts—forming a tree-like hierarchy. Figure 12 shows how we switch thecontext to P2P → PNRP → Cloud.

Figure 12. netsh context

The commands that you enter in netsh factor into the context on which you are working. Forexample, the show command that is entered (see Figure 12) knows that the context is cloudwithin a PNRP network and shows the commands for that context. You can switch from onecontext to another at any time.

Listing Clouds

If you want to see the clouds to which you are currently connected, you will use the showlist command, as shown in Figure 13. In this example, you can see two clouds, where one ofthose clouds is synchronizing. Later, you will see when the cloud has finished synchronizing.



Figure 13. Listing of clouds

To see the configuration and status of the cloud, you use the show initialization command(or show init, in its short form). If a computer is connected to the Internet, it is part of theglobal cloud that is called Global_. If a cloud is connected to one or two LANs, individualclouds are available for each network adapter (or link).

As its name suggests, scope (see Figure 13) represents the scope of the cloud and essentiallyshows the PNRPCLOUDINFO data structure that is part of the P2P SDK. The following listdefines each of the columns that are defined in PNRPCLOUDINFO:

Scope—The scope of the cloud. It can be one of four values, from 0 to 3. Each ofthese values is described in the next section.Id—The unique identifier for that cloud.State—The state of the cloud. It is represented by the PNRP_CLOUD_STATE structurein the SDK. This can be one of eight values and is described in the next section.

Cloud Scopes

The scope of a cloud can be one of the four values that are shown in the following list:

0—The cloud can be in any scope (represented by PNRP_SCOPE_ANY).1—The cloud is a global scope (represented by PNRP _GLOBAL_ SCOPE).2—The cloud is a site-local scope (represented by PNRP_SITE_LOCAL_SCOPE).3—The cloud is a link-local scope (represented by PNRP_LINK_LOCAL_SCOPE).

The state of a cloud can be one of the eight values that are shown in the following list:

Virtual—The cloud is not yet initialized.Synchronizing—The cloud is in the process of being initialized, but is not active yet.Active—The cloud is active.Dead—The cloud has lost its connection to the network, but was initialized.Active—The cloud is active.Disabled—The cloud is disabled in the registry.No Net—The cloud has lost its connection to the network, but was active.Alone—The cloud is in stand-alone mode.

Listing Peers in a Cloud

To see the locally registered nodes in a cloud, use the show names command in netsh. Inthe following example, we see that we have two peers that are identified as P2P Name andare connected to the cloud. Note that the exact list of peers that you see will of course bedifferent from the ones that are shown (if the QuickReturnTraderChat application has beenrunning from earlier, you should see that).

P2P Name: 0.quickreturntraderchat



Listing 28. Peer listing

P2P Name—Name of the peer that is connected to the cloud. In our preceding example,the first peer, 0.quickreturntraderchat, is the QuickReturnTraderChat application thatwas discussed earlier.Identity—Represents the identities, as the name suggests. Note that the identity ofboth of the peers is the same. This is so, because these peers are unsecure, and thedefault identity is used for them.PNRP ID—Represents the corresponding 256-bit PNRP ID.IP Addresses—Represents the endpoints (including the ports) that are associated withthis peer.

Cloud Statistics

To see the cloud statistics, enter the show statistics command (the abbreviated commandshow stat will work, too) in netsh. This will display the statistics for all of the active clouds.For example, Listing 29 lists statistics for the global cloud. Although most of the entries areself-explanatory, the IP Addresses column is a list of the addresses that is used to connect tothe cloud.

Listing 29. Cloud statistics

There are more commands within the cloud context; to give you a basic understanding, wediscussed only the more important ones. We encourage you to use the documentation and theSDK to explore other commands in netsh.

Working with Peers

To switch to the peer context from within PNRP, just type peer in netsh. The peer’s context,as the name suggests, allows you to work with peers and gives you the ability to add, delete,and enumerate entries, among other things. We will not be covering all of the commands—justa couple of the more interesting ones. As you know, before one peer can talk to another peer,it must resolve that peer. To do this with netsh, you use the resolve command—passing itthe peer name. In this example, if you try to resolve the peer that is called0.quickreturntraderchat, you get the result from Listing 30.

Identity: 2460f44f457b670116f55709f3e6324dd12ad70e.PnrpProtocolV2Comment: a?????????PNRP ID: cf284a913c76d8289f16c4fefbe18b7a.5bcca4c6a1090f379d15b0f12fc89b08State: OKIP Addresses: 192.168.1.73:11989 tcp [2001:0000:4136:e37a:2847:1735:a83d:dc55]:11989 tcpP2P Name: 0.78873591048Identity: 2460f44f457b670116f55709f3e6324dd12ad70e.PnrpProtocolV2Comment: Local Machine IdPNRP ID: ad1d55aa343d35df9d118343e3c3de09.7700660055004400f956ced74b6beb3cState: OK

IP Addresses: [2001:0000:4136:e37a:2847:1735:a83d:dc55]:3540Number of cache entries: 34Estimated cloud size: 142Number of registered names: 3Throttled resolves: 0Throttled solicits: 0Throttled floods: 0Throttled repairs: 0



Listing 30. Peer resolution

As you can see in the preceding example, two instances of the QuickReturnTraderChatapplication are running. Also, there are two network cards—one of which is connected to theInternet, and one of which is on an internal network. The first network adapter (which isconnected to the Internet connection) has the IP address of 192.168.1.73 (after NAT, ofcourse), and the local one has the IP address of 169.254.2.2—both of which are listening onport 28365.

The other command of interest is the traceroute command, which resolves a peer with pathtracing. If the name is registered, the result will be quite similar to the resolve command thatwas used earlier, as shown in Listing 31.

Listing 31. Known-peer trace route

If, on the other hand, the peer is not registered, we will see a more interesting behavior, asshown in Listing 32. Note that an invalid name (0.quickreturntraderchatwedontkow) is providedto mimic this behavior. Also, Listing 32 has been abbreviated for clarity. The exact number ofhops would vary, depending on the size of your cloud.

netsh p2p pnrp peer>resolve 0.quickreturntraderchatResolve started...Found:Comment: aD????????Addresses: [fe80:0000:0000:0000:79ae:4fe7:e034:eac7]%8:28365Extended payload (binary):Comment: aD????????Addresses: [fe80:0000:0000:0000:79ae:4fe7:e034:eac7]%8:28136Extended payload (binary):Comment: aD????????Addresses: 169.254.2.2:28365192.168.1.73:28365[2001:0000:4136:e37a:2847:1735:a83d:dc55]%0:28365Extended payload (binary):

netsh p2p pnrp peer>traceroute 0.quickreturntraderchat Global_Resolve started...Found: Addresses: 169.254.2.2:28365 tcp 192.168.1.73:28365 tcp [2001:0000:4136:e37a:2847:1735:a83d:dc55]%0:28365tcp Extended payload (string): Extended payload (binary):Resolve Path:[2001:0000:4136:e37a:2847:1735:a83d:dc55]:3540, (0), (0) Accepted[2001:0000:4136:e37a:2847:1735:a83d:dc55]:3540, (0), (0) Accepted Final Inquire

netsh p2p pnrp peer>traceroute 0.quickreturntraderchatwedontkow Global_Resolve started...Not Found.Resolve Path:[2001:0000:4136:e37a:2847:1735:a83d:dc55]:3540, (0), (0) Accepted[2001:0000:4136:e37e:140b:26c5:affa:3034]:3540, (8), (31) Rejected (Dead end)[2001:0000:4136:e37e:244b:1e65:abdb:f294]:3540, (7), (140)



Debugging Tips

Listing 32. Unknown-peer trace route

Windows XP and Windows Vista

If you cannot get a computer that is running Windows XP to talk to another computer, checkto see if the PNRP is installed. Also, if the target computer is running Windows Vista, youmight have to upgrade to PNRP version 2.0. Windows XP ships with PNRP version 1.0, which isnot compatible with PNRP version 2.0 (the latter version ships with Windows Vista). To enablePNRP on Windows XP, perform the following steps:

1. Go to Add/Remove Programs.2. Select Add/Remove Windows Components.3. Select Networking Details, and then click Details.4. Select Peer to Peer, and then click OK.

As soon as you have enabled PNRP, you must upgrade to version 2.0 by downloading theupdate from http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/920342. However, note that youmust have Windows XP SP2 applied to install this update. To test whether PNRP is installedand working correctly, you can list the clouds to which you are connected by opening acommand prompt and running the following netsh command:

IPv6 Issues

If you are running Windows Vista (or Windows XP with PNRP 2.0 installed) and you don’t seethe Global_ cloud listed, as shown in Figure 14, it probably means that IPv6 is not working onthe computer.

Rejected (Dead end)[2001:0000:4136:e37e:1c75:1b9a:bef2:f5a3]:3540, (4), (312) Accepted Suspicious[2001:0000:4136:e37e:0c31:07f8:5351:cf06]:3540, (4), (2000) Rejected (Unreachable)[2001:0000:4136:e37e:1c75:1b9a:bef2:f5a3]:3540, (4), (125) Rejected (Dead end)[2001:0000:4136:e37a:384f:1905:bde1:91be]:3540, (4), (297) Rejected (Dead end)[2001:0000:4136:e378:1cb4:2170:a795:ebd9]:3540, (3), (78) Rejected (Dead end) [2001:0000:4136:e37a:0c25:34ef:e7ef:9e09]:3540, (2), (203) Accepted

netsh p2p pnrp cloud show list



Figure 14. Missing Global_ cloud

The following list shows the possible status that the Global_ cloud can have:

Virtual—The cloud has not finished initializing.No Net—The network connection has dropped (either the cable is unplugged or you arenot in a Wi-Fi range anymore).Active—All is well, and you are connected to other peers.Synchronizing—The cloud is still bootstrapping (this is a quick process; it is quite rarefor you to encounter this status).Alone—You are not reachable and cannot publish or resolve other peers. If you knowthat there are other peers on the network, a firewall might be blocking UDO ports 3540and 1900. Check your seed server by using the netsh p2p pnrp cloud show seedGlobal_ command. (The default for Windows Vista is pnrpv2.ipv6.microsoft.com andpnrpv21.ipv6.microsoft.com.)

Registering a Name

If you want to register a peer name, you can use the netsh command, as shown in thefollowing snippet. Figure 15 shows the result when it is run in a command prompt. Note thatthis registration is valid only for the life of the process (this is the netsh executable, in thiscase). You can use the netsh command to convert to host-name encoding also, as shownhere:

When you register a name, it is also recorded in the registry and can be found in the:“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\PeerNet\PNRP\MachineNamePublication\MachineName” key.

netsh p2p pnrp peer add registration 0.AmitBahree Global_netsh p2p pnrp peer show convertedname 0.AmitBahree



Bringing It All Together

Figure 15. Registering a name

Seed Server

If you are having problems, you might want to try to ping the seed by using the p2p pnrpdiag ping seed Global_ command. Although Microsoft owns pnrp.net, you can set up yourown seed server, run a private PNRP cloud, and configure the peers to bootstrap from thecustom clouds. There are two ways to change the seed server:

Change the seed server setting in the registry to point to your seed server:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\PeerNet\PNRP\IPV6-GlobalOverride the Windows host file to point pnrpv2.ipv6.microsoft.com andpnrpv21.ipv6.microsoft.com to your seed server.

To show all of the various elements that we discuss in this article, we have three simpleapplications that work in tandem. Two of these applications are the secure and unsecureimplementations of our chat application. The last application is a Peer and Contact Explorerthat shows you all of the PNMs on your subnet, as well as the Contacts in your WAB. If youchoose to, you can also see more details of each of those entities, such as endpoint address,port, online status, and so on.

As an example, Figure 16 shows that there is one another user who is called “Amit2” and islogged on to the PNM infrastructure via the “AMIT-VPC” computer.

Figure 16. Peer and Contact Explorer



Clicking Tools and then Options gives us a few more options, such as listing the AvailableClouds and the peer applications that have been registered on this computer. As shown inFigure 17, you use this dialog box to register a new application for the P2P infrastructure. Inour example, we are registering the QuickReturnTraderChat application. If you don’t have aunique ID for this computer, you can generate one. Of course, if you do generate one, youmust provide the same ID to other users, because it is this ID only that identifies theapplication to launch on the target computer.

Figure 17. Options dialog box

Right-clicking on a specific peer gives us the option to invite them to start an application.Figures 18, 19, and 20 show us inviting another peer to launch the QuickReturnTraderChatapplication, the invitation that they accept, and the application finally being launched,respectively.

Figure 18. Inviting peer to launch an application

Figure 19. Invitation alert



Conclusion

References

Figure 20. Invitation details

Figure 21 shows us two instances of the QuickReturnTraderChat application running on onecomputer, and a third instance running in a VM. It also shows us two other instances of theQuickReturnSecureTraderChat sample. Although both the unsecure and secure versions arerunning on the same computer, they cannot eavesdrop on each other’s messages.

Figure 21. Various application instances running in parallel

This article provides an understanding of the fundamentals of P2P and shows how to use thenew features of WCF—allowing us to build P2P applications by using managed code in .NETFramework 3.0. The article also introduces the new features of managing P2P networks,including using People Near Me and Windows Address Book, both of which are new featuresthat are released as part of Windows Vista.

“Peer-to-Peer Networking” (MSDN Library)—http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms899527.aspx“Peer-to-Peer Application Development” (MSDN Library)—http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms883403.aspx“Peer-to-peer” (Microsoft TechNet)—http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742623.aspx“Microsoft Peer-to-Peer Networking” (P2P blog)—http://blogs.msdn.com/p2p/



© 2012 Microsoft. All rights reserved.

About the authors

Amit Bahree is a Senior Solution Architect with Avanade and has over 14 years of experiencein IT—developing and designing mission-critical systems. His background is a mixture ofproduct development, embedded systems, and custom solutions across both public and privatesectors. Amit has experience in a wide range of industry verticals—ranging from financialservices to utilities to insurance—and has implemented solutions for many Fortune 100companies. For Amit, computers are a passion first, a hobby second, and a career third, andhe is glad that he gets paid to do what he loves the most. He can be contacted via his blogat www.desigeek.com.

Chris Peiris is an avid publisher in the application integration space and works for AvanadeAustralia as a Solutions Architect. He is a frequent speaker at professional developerconferences on Microsoft technologies. Chris has written many articles, reviews, and columnsfor various online publications, including MSDN, 15 Seconds, ASPToday, Wrox (Apress), andDeveloper Exchange (DevX). He has also coauthored many books on WCF, Web services,UDDI, C#, IIS, Java, and Security topics. Chris’s current passions include WCF, .NETFramework 3.0, IBM Message Broker, Microsoft BizTalk, and other EAI implementations. Hiscomplete list of publications and contact details are available at http://www.chrispeiris.com.

Avanade is a global IT consultancy dedicated to using the Microsoft platform to helpenterprises achieve profitable growth. Through proven solutions that extend Microsofttechnologies, Avanade helps enterprises increase revenue, reduce costs, and reinvest ininnovation to gain competitive advantage. Our consultants deliver value according to eachcustomer's requirements, time line, and budget by combining insight, innovation, and thetalent of our global workforce. Additional information can be found at www.avanade.com.

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Peer-To-Peer Programming With WCF and .NET Framework 3

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