Nym Clients

A large proportion of the Nym mixnet's functionality is implemented client-side.

Clients perform the following actions on behalf of users:

• Determine network topology - what nodes exist, their public encryption keys, etc.
• Register with a gateway
• Authenticate with a gateway
• Receive and decrypt messages from the gateway
• Create layer-encrypted Sphinx packets
• Send Sphinx packets with real messages
• Send Sphinx packet cover traffic when no real messages are being sent
• Retransmit un-acknowledged packet sends

At the moment due to the fact that Nym clients are message-based, using the Mixnet requires another client on the 'other side' of the mixet to send packets to, unless you're using the nymvpn client (part of the NymVPN app) or the socks5 client, which operates as a SOCKS4,4a, or 5 proxy and is able to utilise the client embedded within the nym-node's Exit Gateway functionality (prev. this functionality was a standalone service, the Network Requester). In the future we wish to remove this point of friction and have all Nym clients construct IP packets instead, easing the integration burden and abstracting away the message-based nature of client communication.