Provides client-side functionality to connect to a XayNet service.
This functionality includes:
- Abiding by (the underlying [
Participant]'s side of) the PET protocol. - Handling the network communication with the XayNet service, including polling of service data.
Participant
In any given round of federated learning, each [Participant] of the
protocol is characterised by a role which determines its [Task] to carry
out in the round, and which is computed by check_task.
Participants selected to Update are responsible for sending masked model
updates in the form of PET messages constructed with
compose_update_message.
Participants selected to Sum are responsible for sending ephemeral keys
and global masks in PET messages constructed respectively with
compose_sum_message and compose_sum2_message.
Client
A [Client] has an intentionally simple API - the idea is that it is
initialised with some settings, and then start()ed. Currently for
simplicity, clients that have started running will do so indefinitely. It is
therefore the user's responsibility to terminate clients that are no longer
needed. Alternatively, it may be more convenient to run just a single round
(or a known fixed number of rounds). In this case, use during_round().
For examples of usage, see the test-drive scripts.
Note. At present, the [Client] implementation is somewhat tightly
coupled with the workings of the C-API SDK, but this may well change in a
future version to be more independently reusable.