GET_AUTHORITY_EPOCH — Group 21, Code 1
Cheap probe: current epoch id plus snapshot hash and sizes, so a client can tell whether its cached list is stale.
Design-stage — parameters are a first draft
Field sizes are drafted from raidax/ideas_for_suspect_raida_servers.txt (Addenda 5–7) and are not final or implementation-verified. The body is encrypted per the header ENC_CODE; see below.
Phase I — essential
This command is part of the Phase I minimum needed for a coin to move from root to suspect (and back) and be trusted by a workstation. Lets a client tell if its cached authority list is current.
How it works
Because a coin's authority only changes at scheduled epoch boundaries (e.g. monthly), the list of which-coin-lives-on-which-server stays the same for a whole epoch and clients cache it. This command is the cheap probe a client uses to find out whether its cached copy is still current.
The client asks any server for the current epoch id plus a fingerprint (hash) and the sizes of the authority list. If the epoch matches what the client already has, it does nothing further. If it has fallen behind, it knows to download a fresh copy or just the changes. This keeps authentication fast: the expensive lookup happens at most once per epoch, never per coin.
Direction & encryption
- Direction: client → mirror
- ENC_CODE: 0 (none)
Request Body parameters
| Field | Bytes | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CH (challenge) | 16 | Standard challenge / replay protection (per header convention). |
| EOF | 2 | Terminator (0x3E3E). |
Response Body parameters
| Field | Bytes | Description |
|---|---|---|
| current_epoch | 4 | Current epoch id (YYYYMM). |
| snapshot_hash | 16 | Hash of the full snapshot for this epoch. |
| full_size | 4 | Byte size of the full snapshot. |
| delta_size | 4 | Byte size of the delta from the previous epoch. |