GitHub - tmc/go-iroh: iroh networking for go

go-iroh is a Go implementation of iroh. It provides peer-to-peer QUIC endpoints identified by ed25519 public keys, with direct paths, relay fallback, QUIC Retry, multipath, QAD observed addresses, and QNT NAT traversal support, plus Rust-compatible ports of the iroh protocol stack: blobs, gossip, and docs.

The module is a clean-room Go port targeting wire compatibility with upstream Rust iroh. It is not affiliated with the n0 team.

Packages

Connectivity layer:

Protocols (Rust-compatible ports):

Commands:

The transport internals live under internal/: relay protocol/client/server, net reports, socket path management, RFC 7250 TLS, the postcard and pkarr implementations, the gossip proto state machine, and qng, the quic-go fork used for iroh/noq compatibility.

Install

go get github.com/tmc/go-iroh

This module currently declares Go 1.26 in go.mod.

Use

The iroh package is the main entry point:

ep, err := iroh.Bind(ctx, iroh.WithALPNs("example/1"))
if err != nil {
	return err
}
defer ep.Shutdown(ctx)

conn, err := ep.Connect(ctx, peerAddr, "example/1")
if err != nil {
	return err
}
defer conn.CloseWithError(0, "")

ALPN means Application-Layer Protocol Negotiation. It is the TLS extension that lets peers agree which application protocol a QUIC connection will carry, such as "example/1" or "n0/iroh/transfer/example/1". go-iroh uses ALPN values to route incoming connections to handlers.

The API takes ALPN values as Go strings. TLS ALPN values are byte strings on the wire; Go strings preserve arbitrary bytes, while keeping the common printable ASCII case simple.

See iroh/example_test.go for runnable direct-loopback Router and Endpoint examples.

Wire Compatibility

Relay, pkarr, DoH, and DoT connections use standard WebPKI TLS. Direct peer-to-peer QUIC uses TLS 1.3 Raw Public Keys (RFC 7250) with mutual endpoint authentication. Go's standard crypto/tls does not support RFC 7250, so this repository carries internal/itls/tls and drives it from internal/qng.

internal/qng is a quic-go v0.59.1 fork extended for the iroh/noq transport surface: multipath, QAD observed-address reporting, QNT NAT traversal, and pre-connection QUIC Retry admission. The fork-local READMEs document when those forks can be removed.

Validation

Run the local suite:

For a repeatable local check:

For loopback stream/datagram latency and throughput, with raw TCP and UDP baselines:

GOMAXPROCS=4 go test ./iroh -run '^$' -bench 'Benchmark(Conn|RawTCP|RawUDP)' -benchtime=5s -count=5

BenchmarkRawUDPMagicQueuedPingPong is the closest raw UDP latency baseline for the magic-socket path: it uses the same receive queue depth, pooled receive buffers, caller-buffer copy, and separate write queue shape as the direct IP transport.

Live Rust interop gates are opt-in because they require a checked-out and built Rust iroh tree:

GO_IROH_LIVE_RUST_INTEROP=1 \
IROH_RUST_REPO=/path/to/n0-computer/iroh \
go test ./internal/compat -run 'TestLiveRust' -count=1 -v

GO_IROH_LIVE_RUST_INTEROP=1 \
IROH_RUST_REPO=/path/to/n0-computer/iroh \
go test ./iroh -run TestLiveRustTransferFetchPingDirectPath -count=1 -v

The gossip stack has its own opt-in live gate that builds a Rust iroh-gossip helper (from gossip/testdata/rust-gossip-interop) and exchanges membership and broadcast with it over /iroh-gossip/1. It requires cargo:

GO_IROH_LIVE_RUST_GOSSIP=1 go test ./gossip -run TestLiveRustGossipInterop -count=1 -v

Status

The connectivity layer is a wire-compatible iroh endpoint. The protocol packages (blobs, gossip, docs) port the corresponding Rust crates, sharing the postcard and pkarr wire codecs; gossip carries the full HyParView and PlumTree state machine with a postcard discovery channel.

The normal local suite covers the public packages, qng transport extensions, and local relay/direct behavior. The opt-in Rust gates cover live echo, Rust transfer provider/upload, direct-path selection, qlog evidence for QNT frames, and Go↔Rust gossip membership and broadcast, when the host environment provides the required binaries and network topology.

GOOS=js/GOARCH=wasm builds compile. Browser runtime support is limited by the platform: the relay WebSocket client has a js-specific dial path, but direct UDP QUIC, direct paths, and NAT traversal are not available in browser WebAssembly.

License

go-iroh is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.

The forked quic-go code under internal/qng retains its upstream license notice in internal/qng/LICENSE.