Historical context
Although ProbeLab is not a new team, it is a relatively new independent entity. ProbeLab has been formed within Protocol Labs circa 2022 to build measurement tools and produce metrics for the performance of the IPFS network [read the blog]. ProbeLab team members have worked across the entire “Interplanetary Stack”, which includes IPFS, libp2p, Filecoin, drand and other networks, as core devs, researchers and engineering managers.
Here’s a selective list of past studies that the team has carried out:
Here’s a selective list of recordings from our team members:
- Data-Driven Protocol Design: What it is and what are the benefits [link to video] - by Yiannis
- IPFS DHT Routing Table Health [link to video] - by Gui
- The IPFS Network from the Hydra’s PoV [link to video] - by Dennis
- Double Hashing as a way to increase reader privacy [link to video] - by Gui
- A Deep Dive into the IPFS DHT’s Provider Records [link to video] - by Mikel
Since early 2024 the team has become an independent team in the Protocol Labs Network and lives under the same umbrella, the Interplanetary Shipyard [announcement], with the IPFS and libp2p core developers.
Motivation
The team’s motivation is simple: the P2P layer’s correct operation is a prerequisite for everything that is built on top. Whether that is simply a file transfer application, a blockchain, or DeFi, if things break at the P2P layer, everything on top collapses.
With that in mind, our team has developed the right skillset over the years to provide lightning fast problem solving for networking-layer problems.
Areas of specialisation
The ProbeLab team specialises in developing tools for measurement and monitoring of P2P layer protocols. Although the team’s initial focus has been the IPFS and Filecoin networks, it has since expanded its focus to cover the entire libp2p horizon and eventually go beyond to cover any blockchain network.
The team has built a wide variety of tools and deployed infrastructure that runs 24/7 and monitors several high profile networks. ProbeLab offers services in several shapes and forms, from executive weekly reports on the state of P2P networks, to more tailor-made studies on particular protocols and metrics. Here’s a list of areas that our team excels:
- Weekly Network Health Reports: Executive reports from our crawler that runs 24/7 and gathers data that among others reveal: network size, node uptime, agent version distribution and uptake, geolocation of nodes, cloud infra providers.
These are essential data-points that every network operator needs to be aware of to make the right deployment, release and maintenance decisions.
An excellent first step to get a high-level idea of the structure and size of your network!
- Network Health Diagnostics: One month-long deep dive into your networking stack by our team of experts. At the end of the diagnostics study you will know: the strong and weak points of your networking stack, how you can improve performance, where to start if you want to save money for node operators, or infrastructure providers, which is the most vulnerable part of your stack.
Depending on the specifics of the network stack, basic measurement tooling is normally provided.
A first deep-dive networking audit to figure out where attention is needed.
- Tailor-made Monitoring Tools: Every network comes with its own needs and specificities. We develop measurement and monitoring tooling to help you get insights into the metrics that matter to you the most.
Alongside tooling comes: i) specialized infrastructure setup, ii) data analysis to turn data into actionable optimization tasks.
Start building your networking measurement toolbox.
- Real-time monitoring and alerting: Correct operation of systems and networks is very often defined by boundaries and thresholds. Exceeding thresholds raises alarms and triggers either manual or automated corrective actions.
Start getting an accurate, real-time view of when things are about to go sideways.
- Networking Stack Security Audits: Networking protocols are very often prone to tiny bugs that can be exploited from a single computer. Our team can put the protocols under the magnifier glass and reveal vulnerabilities, as well as their severity levels.
A protocol stack is as weak as its weakest link. Get ahead of the game with a bulletproof networking stack.
- Stats for MiCA and other regulatory purposes: Regulations such as MiCA and other similar ones are getting a lot of traction lately and are scheduled to come into effect within 2024. Our specialised and battle-tested tooling can provide detailed numbers for regulatory purposes and cover metrics such as: network size, node types and client implementations, geolocation and geographic distribution of nodes, cloud deployment are some of the central items that will be required.
Get ahead of the game acquire the data you need as a token issuer to avoid exchange delisting.
You can find our results and dashboards at: https://probelab.io. A list of past studies can be found in this Github repository.
Current Focus
We are currently working with a number of high-profile teams to address networking challenges, and advance networking-layer logic to tackle critical problems.
- Data Availability Sampling (DAS) is a core focus in the Ethereum community and as has been quoted before, more than anything else, it’s primarily a networking layer issue.
- Alternative (and in some cases complementary) approaches to Ethereum’s DAS have been in the works for several years and are now materialising in Celestia’s and Avail’s DA solutions.
- The European Union’s MiCA regulatory framework requires detailed analytics about the structure and demographics of blockchain network nodes, as well as environmental sustainability metrics. We are partnering with projects, such as, Polkadot and Filecoin to provide the required data for their regulatory compliance needs.
ProbeLab’s suite of tools and expertise is proving extremely helpful for these use-cases. Our studies dive deep in each of the projects we’re getting our hands into. For more information, stay tuned for upcoming blogposts, where we’ll be providing details of the projects we’re running.
Open to Network
Our team is expanding to address the needs of our customers. We are constantly developing extra tools, which are free and open source for the community to experiment with and reuse. Get in touch through the contact details at: probelab.network/contact if you want to get insights into the internals of your P2P network.
