Project Lateralus: A distributed relay system in JavaScript

In today's social networking age, we often spend time posting insignificant life updates. But other times, emergency situations arise – times when you really need to get your message across.

In emergencies, however, we face obstacles such as low connectivity, blocked networks, no mobile data plans, or not having a smartphone at all. A solution to this problem is a service/platform that allows users to communicate with their relatives via social networks using SMS or BLE protocols. In other words, the ability to use internet without having direct access to it.

This was a talk presented in JSConf Uruguay 2016: https://jsconf.uy/schedule#lateralus-a-distributed-relay-system-in-javascript

Transcript

1. Project Lateralus A distributed relay system in JavaScript by Raul Pino JSConf Uruguay 2016 1
2. Who am I? • Born in Venezuela. • Universidad Centroccidental Lisandro Alvarado (UCLA) • Living in Chile. • Axiom Zen • ZenHub • Groupon Latam. 2
3. Agenda Project Lateralus * Motivation * Problem * Solution Deatour into distributed systems Lateral ß * Architecture * Implementation * Demo 3
4. Lateralus: Motivation • Interested in the topic (Cloud Computing (Coursera)). • Situation in Venezuela. • Political, economical, and social unstability, ... • Situation in Chile. • Earthquakes, volcanos, wildfires, tsunamis, ... 4
5. Lateralus: Problem • No internet connection. • Voice calls service 1:1. • SMS by itself is 1:1 too. 5
6. Lateralus: Solution • Login once in a website with your Twitter account. • Send SMS to certified (local) phones. • Your message gets published. That's all. Twitter has that right? 6
7. Deatour into distributed systems Multicast Problem Failure Detection Problem 7
8. Multicast Problem Share information across the network 8
9. Multicast Problem Gossip protocol 9
10. Failure Detection Problem Keep track of available nodes 10
11. Failure Detection Problem Membership protocol 11
12. Failure Detection Problem Membership protocol: Centralized Heartbeating 12
13. Lateralus ß: Architecture 13
14. Lateralus ß: Architecture Gossip protocol variant 14
15. Lateralus ß: Architecture Membership protocol variant 15
16. Lateralus ß: Implementation Lets build the prototype! Lateral Server: * Node.js server (Express) * Twilio access (twilio package) * Twitter login (passport-twitter) * Phone number valdiation (google- libphonenumber) * * Database on MongoDB (listeners list). 16
17. Lateralus ß: Implementation Lateral App: * Ionic * Send/receive SMS (cordova-plugin- sms) * Listeners list on PouchDB (cordova adapter) * Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) cordova- plugin-bluetoothle * 17
18. Lateralus ß: Demo 18
19. Roadmap • Release ß version! • GitHub org: project-lateralus • Bluetooth Low Energy • Paper draft about the protocol 19
20. Takeaways Universal JavaScript is here to stay and ready to support you! 20
21. Thanks! The only thing needed is your will, because you already have the power. Twitter: @p1nox GitHub: p1nox https://github.com/project-lateralus 21