fix!: do not auto-dial peers

[achingbrain]

Currently whenever a new peer is discovered we automatically dial them if we are below the connection manager connection limit.

This is incredibly resource intensive and does not necessarily result in high-quality connections (e.g. KAD close, relays or supporting protocols we are interested in).

Now that we can search the DHT for peers, this is no longer necessary so remove the functionality.

BREAKING CHANGE: the old behaviour was to dial any peer we discover, now we just add them to the peer store instead

[danisharora099]

Was this PR/commit overwritten to reverse the functionality?

• The latest master currently autodials to peers as can be seen here:

  js-libp2p/src/libp2p.ts

  Line 155 in bd2bdf7

  this.configureComponent(new AutoDialler(this.components, {

• This commit's version of libp2p.tsdoesn't exist: https://github.com/libp2p/js-libp2p/blob/d91964f1608e00e18546762f7d01e328ea6483f6/src/libp2p.ts

Not sure what I'm missing.

cc @achingbrain

[achingbrain]

The autodialer component ensures the node has active connections to a minimum number of peers (configured by connectionManager.minConnections) - if it drops below this the node will dial random peers from the peer store until the number of connections is above minConnections. This is to ensure reachability for things like pubsub messages, DHT queries etc.

The "auto-dial" functionality removed in this PR was that libp2p used to dial every peer it discovered - this is separate to the minConnections behaviour.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[achingbrain]

Looks like the docs are a little out of date 😩 sorry about that!

[danisharora099]

@achingbrain I see. To confirm, libp2p still "autodials" to minConnections by default?

[achingbrain]

Yes, as per the above, the autodialer component ensures a node keeps minConnections open.

[danisharora099]

Thanks for clarifying!