I believe it’s in crust where this gets accomplished. Unfortunately, I am not cogniscent on exactly how this occurs. However, it is mentioned many times by @dirvine in these forums.
Disclaimer: I am not sure this is how it works, and would welcome any critique or clarification that any devs would have to give
My best guess is that since the network operates on XOR space, (and not IP addresses like TOR), the first hop is to another IP address based on it’s closeness of it’s XOR location related to the piece of information it’s retrieving.
This first hop will then be to a vault, and all others after as well. Keep in mind that vaults are stateless, and only retain information for the time it takes for them to perform whatever process they need to do on it.
After the first hop, vault1 queries their DHT for the node closest to the hash of that piece, and sends the request on. Now that request (on vault2) is comprised of:
- Hash of data requested
- recipient XOR
That continues on and on until the vault is found with the piece of data. At that point, vault9 says “I have this piece of data, let me see who in my hash table is closest to the intended recipient”.
The path is not necessarily the same, because “Every computer has a different view of the network”. In reality, it is most likely going to be a completely different path.
Vault9 will then send it to vault8, who recieves, similarly:
- data
- recipient XOR
and on and on until the recipient is found and the data delivered.
So now that you (hopefully) see how the network works in XOR space, one final note about Kedemlia that may tie this all together. Here’s a graphic (video starts at correct time for reference). The DHT that’s held by all nodes does show the IP address of other nodes. The routing however, is done on a step-by-step basis.
This simple explanation may have holes that the maidsafe team has confronted and solved, but I am not aware of the details, and only hoped to convey an elementary view of the network…the only type that I am able to provide with my limited knowledge.