At the moment the network messages are very inefficient and not optimised at all. This is both in size of messages and also number that are sent. Another issue is all nodes are treated equally, so a single bad node in a group will slow the whole group to almost that nodes speed.
These are all related to security and data persistence though. The next steps for vaults and routing is security and data resilience (Secure data republishing and validating per group). This is an interesting part as the security looks like it will actually facilitate less messages, or at least more efficient messages. We will know very soon though. We are certainly looking at an ability to handle the slower nodes and allowing the network to work at the speeds of the fastest nodes per group rather than the situation now where many times it’s the slowest node. These are all connected and underway at the moment. Much of the work is coded and being actively audited and debated right now.
After securing the data integrity and persistence the big push in routing etc. will be efficiency. That will be finalising the wire format. This part will show us what the actual speed will be and where it needs to be very fast. For me upload is OK to take a while, not from the client though, in the network. So the client can upload fast and the network can take a little longer to situate and securely store the data (eventual consistency). Get requests need to be very fast and almost by default Post will be to (as you are personally proving ownership).
Hopefully as the routing team are doing that the additional features will happen in parallel (nfs API, messaging safecoin etc.).
That’s a short precis of the current work that is happening. Again increasing the team is essential to aid the speed of delivery and amount of testing etc. All the feedback certainly helps us progress faster as well though as we can focus on what’s important right now.