Replication
Description of various Secure Scuttlebutt replication mechanisms.
Two separate replication mechanisms exist within the Secure Scuttlebutt ecosystem.
The older mechanism relies on the createHistoryStream RPC requests and is sometimes referred to as “legacy” replication. This mechanism is described in the Scuttlebutt Protocol Guide and has several downsides; the main downside being the high overhead associated with establishing separate RPC request streams for every single feed which needs to be replicated on every new connection with a peer. This leads to peers handling tens of thousands of separate request streams when connecting to eg. large pubs.
The newer mechanism is usually referred to as Epidemic Broadcast Trees (or “EBT” for short) and is documented in the Epidemic Broadcast Trees section of this documentation.