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Carrier Overview

Carrier is the peer-to-peer networking layer of the Elastos World Computer. It enables devices to find each other and communicate directly, without routing data through a central server.

What Carrier Does​

  • Peer discovery: Devices find each other using a distributed hash table (DHT), a shared directory spread across the network
  • Direct messaging: Messages go directly from sender to receiver, encrypted end-to-end
  • NAT traversal: Carrier can punch through firewalls and routers using Active Proxy, so connections work even on restrictive networks
  • Service hosting: Devices can advertise services (like a personal storage node) to the network

How It Affects You​

As a user, Carrier works behind the scenes in several Elastos products:

  • PC2 uses Carrier for peer-to-peer connectivity between personal clouds
  • ElastOS Runtime relies on Carrier for chat and content sharing between peers
  • Essentials can use Carrier for direct wallet-to-wallet communication

You typically do not interact with Carrier directly. It is the infrastructure layer that makes decentralized communication possible across the ecosystem.

The Boson Network​

The Carrier team has evolved the technology into the Boson Network, an open-source infrastructure network. Boson extends Carrier's capabilities with enhanced relay services and integration with the broader Elastos ecosystem.

Learn More​

For technical details on Carrier's architecture, see the Developer Guide.