Is there any idea right now on how the future of protocol to send and receive messages to/from the IC from the outside world?
As far as I understand an IC function call is wrapped in an Http Request, sent to a boundry node, which will then give the request to the IC, wait for a response, then return a response
I have heard that boundary nodes are a temporary/not fully developed portion of the IC ecosystem, but I don’t hear much about what will follow it.
Is there a reason why there isn’t a direct interface with the IC? Do we just have to make a new protocol that would replace HTTP for this situation?
I get having HTTP to allow for easy integration into a Web2.0 world, but would be curious on how people expect it to be down the line
First thing that comes up in the forum search Long Term R&D: Boundary Nodes (proposal)
Ya, i saw that, but all i saw was just the mention of other protocols rather than specific options
DFINITY is working on a document on the functions of Boundary Nodes and their future.
If you use an agent to interact with the IC you essentially use the native IC API that the replicas provide. Boundary Nodes only forward the request to a proper destination replica that hosts the particular canister.
I thought every request, even those initiated by agent-js
and agent-rs
, goes through a boundary node, which forwards it to a replica.
I didn’t know there was a way to call a replica directly.
Yep, that’s true. I just wanted to say that the API is the same. Boundary Nodes do only forward the request as it is to a proper destination replica.
There isn’t. Sorry, if my answer was confusing.