Uflow

Uflow is a Rust library and UDP networking protocol for realtime internet data transfer, with a focus on simplicity and security. Though it has been designed from the ground up, Uflow's interface and functionality are inspired by the venerable ENet library.

Features

• Packet-oriented data transfer between two hosts
• 4-way connection handshake supporting both client-server and peer-to-peer connections
• Automatic packet fragmentation and reassembly according to the internet MTU (1500 bytes)
• Up to 64 virtual, independently sequenced packet streams
• 4 intuitive packet transfer modes: Time-Sensitive, Unreliable, Persistent, and Reliable
• TCP-friendly, streaming congestion control implemented according to RFC 5348
• Efficient frame encoding and transfer protocol with minimal packet overhead
• 100% packet throughput and an unchanged delivery order under ideal network conditions
• Water-tight sequence ID management for maximum dup-mitigation
• Application-configurable receiver memory limits (to prevent memory allocation attacks)
• Sender-validated data acknowledgements (to prevent loss rate / bandwidth spoofing)
• Threadless, non-blocking implementation

Documentation

Documentation can be found at docs.rs.

Architecture

Although a previous version is described in the whitepaper, much has changed about the library in the meantime (including the name!). The current version has the following improvements:

• TCP-friendly congestion control implemented according to RFC 5348
• Receiver memory limits (for packet reassembly)
• No sentinel packets or frames
• An additional packet send mode which causes packets to be dropped if they cannot be sent immediately (Time-Sensitive)
• No iteration over the number of channels

These and other features have proven to be functional, and the new design will soon™ be summarized in a subsequent whitepaper.