I got tired of P2P libraries that are either too heavy or require
a broker/signaling server. So I built js-setowire.
What it does
Peers find each other and talk directly over UDP. No central server,
no WebRTC, no broker.
Discovery runs multiple strategies in parallel — whichever works first wins:
- DHT (decentralized)
- LAN multicast (instant on local networks)
- HTTP bootstrap nodes (fallback)
All traffic is E2E encrypted with X25519 + ChaCha20-Poly1305.
Try it in 30 seconds
git clone https://github.com/setowire-org/js-setowire
node chat.js alice myroom
on another machine:
node chat.js bob myroom
The protocol fits in your head
Plain UDP. 1-byte frame type. Two handshake frames to exchange
keys, then everything is encrypted. Simple enough to reimplement
in any language.
