SCION Applications to use today
This page will help you with trying out the SCION next-generation Internet. Even though it’s a next-generation network, you can already make use of it today!
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Discover if you have SCION connectivity
If you’re connected to a network that provides native SCION connectivity to the SCION commercial network, then you can send a SCION packet to any destination in that network in a “BGP-free” manner, i.e.,
without relying on the BGP protocol!Thus, the commercial SCION network is not an overlay and operates independently from today’s Internet. Therefore, at the very least, making use of both SCION and IPv4/6 enables more resilient end-to-end connectivity.
As SCION provides in most cases many different forwarding paths (in many cases over 100 different path choices!), the odds are high that one of the SCION paths provides improved communication quality (in terms of latency, jitter, loss, bandwidth, MTU, or CO2, just to mention some options) over the single Internet path.
You can check for connectivity by using the connectivity checker on this page.
Congratulations if you have SCION connectivity, then we can try out the next-generation Internet directly from your computer!
In case you don’t have access, the table provides a list of networks with SCION access.
In any case, you can make use of the overlay SCIONLab network to try out SCION. Note that the SCIONLab network is not connected to the commercial “BGP-free” SCION Internet. Joining the overlay network SCIONLab is an automated process and can be done 24/7. It is not necessary to have a public IP address or open a port.
How to experience SCION if you don’t have SCION access
Experiencing SCION without SCION access is a bit difficult. Fear not, we have a few resources that are available on the traditional IP network that will allow you to take a small peek at some applications that are running on the SCION network.
Packet Inspector
One such application is the packet inspector, to which you can send SCION packets and see them show up in the inspector.
JinglePings
Or see SCION pings in action with JinglePings. JinglePings is a fun activity where you can light up pixels on a canvas by sending a ping to a SCION address that specifies the x, y coordinates of the pixel you want to change, as well as the RGBA (red, green, blue, alpha) values you want to change the pixel to. By sending massive amounts of pings you are then able to claim a spot on the canvas and put your own art there.
The JinglePings canvas is displayed on a public screen in Zurich, Switzerland and streamed online. The live stream is accessible on the traditional IP network.
Installing the SCION endhost stack
How to set up SCION on your host
SCION requires a set of components to be installed on your end-host system to be able to use the network.
The Bootstrapping Service uses hints, such as DHCP options, to find where your AS' infrastructure is located, and exposes this information to the Daemon.
The SCION Daemon takes care of communicating with the control plane, for instance to fetch paths to a specific destination. Applications that use SCION typically communicate with the daemon for that purpose.
The SCION Dispatcher responds to SCMP Echo and Traceroutes requests.
A tool has been created which sets up all the components necessary on your system, please refer to the installation commands for your OS.
If you got stuck in the set up process, please let us know where you are stuck via our Slack channel
Sending your first SCION packet
It's time to test your setup! Let's start with the universal test for network connectivity, sending a ping packet.
SCION has its own ping tool inside of the scion binary, you can run it as follows:
scion ping 71-2546,127.0.0.1
As you might notice, the address is a bit different to what you are used to seeing. SCION addresses are in the form: ISD-AS,IP where ISD is the Isolation Domain, AS the Autonomous System Number, and the IP space is unique to the AS.
SCION is a path-aware network, meaning that you can choose the path your packets take. You can see paths between you and another ISD-AS using the built-in showpaths:
scion showpaths 71-2546
[0] Hops: [64-2:0:9 1>5 64-559 11>1 64-2:0:c] MTU: 8972 NextHop: 192.168.53.20:30042 Status: alive LocalIP: 129.132.227.234
[1] Hops: [64-2:0:9 1>5 64-559 12>2 64-2:0:c] MTU: 8972 NextHop: 192.168.53.20:30042 Status: alive LocalIP: 129.132.227.234
[2] Hops: [64-2:0:9 2>6 64-559 11>1 64-2:0:c] MTU: 1472 NextHop: 192.168.53.35:30042 Status: alive LocalIP: 129.132.227.234
[3] Hops: [64-2:0:9 2>6 64-559 12>2 64-2:0:c] MTU: 1472 NextHop: 192.168.53.35:30042 Status: alive LocalIP: 129.132.227.234
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 5000.902ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 10.603/11.142/11.607/0.383 ms
Sending a SCION Packet programmatically
Programming your first SCION packet
There is a strong and growing ecosystem of API's available for SCION, allowing you to SCIONable your applications and experiment with the features the network has to offer.
Let's start with sending a custom packet to the packet inspector at
64-2:0:9,[129.132.175.104]
You can use one of the code examples provided in your favorite programming language to send Hello there! to the packet inspector. Do you see your packet arriving?