Understanding peer records

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1

I’m trying to better understand the output of ipfs dht findpeer when debugging content routing and retrieval in IPFS.

Questions

Are all the multi-addresses returned by the ipfs dht findpeer command with the p2p-circuit suffix relay peers?

For example, running ipfs dht findpeer 12D3KooWFkPkpLWTKDDbE4Dtdknrhj17KTEsduYp4cnS9aYeUuYF | sort gives me

/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/4001
/ip4/127.0.0.1/udp/4001/quic
/ip4/172.31.80.213/tcp/4001
/ip4/172.31.80.213/udp/4001/quic
/ip4/5.161.55.227/tcp/4001/p2p/12D3KooWSW4hoHmDXmY5rW7nCi9XmGTy3foFt72u86jNP53LTNBJ/p2p-circuit
/ip4/5.161.55.227/udp/4001/quic/p2p/12D3KooWSW4hoHmDXmY5rW7nCi9XmGTy3foFt72u86jNP53LTNBJ/p2p-circuit
/ip4/84.146.179.248/tcp/4001/p2p/12D3KooWPutck3ASkfcU13Ht5jzgevBo9Fc1sHS5yYberAYupDtq/p2p-circuit
/ip4/84.146.179.248/udp/4001/quic/p2p/12D3KooWPutck3ASkfcU13Ht5jzgevBo9Fc1sHS5yYberAYupDtq/p2p-circuit
/ip6/2a01:4ff:f0:1e5a::1/tcp/4001/p2p/12D3KooWSW4hoHmDXmY5rW7nCi9XmGTy3foFt72u86jNP53LTNBJ/p2p-circuit
/ip6/2a01:4ff:f0:1e5a::1/udp/4001/quic/p2p/12D3KooWSW4hoHmDXmY5rW7nCi9XmGTy3foFt72u86jNP53LTNBJ/p2p-circuit
/ip6/64:ff9b::5492:b3f8/tcp/4001/p2p/12D3KooWPutck3ASkfcU13Ht5jzgevBo9Fc1sHS5yYberAYupDtq/p2p-circuit
/ip6/64:ff9b::5492:b3f8/udp/4001/quic/p2p/12D3KooWPutck3ASkfcU13Ht5jzgevBo9Fc1sHS5yYberAYupDtq/p2p-circuit
/ip6/64:ff9b::5a1:37e3/udp/4001/quic/p2p/12D3KooWSW4hoHmDXmY5rW7nCi9XmGTy3foFt72u86jNP53LTNBJ/p2p-circuit

Can I assume that the node is not publicly reachable (since there’s no public address without p2p-circuit?)

How come ipfs ping 12D3KooWFkPkpLWTKDDbE4Dtdknrhj17KTEsduYp4cnS9aYeUuYF works? Does it use a relay for the pings?

Is there a way to know which IP/address is used by ipfs ping?

2

Try ipfs swarm peers | grep 12D3KooWFkPkpLWTKDDbE4Dtdknrhj17KTEsduYp4cnS9aYeUuYF. Should list the open connections to that peer. You can see what it is using.

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3

Thanks!

ipfs swarm peers | grep 12D3KooWFkPkpLWTKDDbE4Dtdknrhj17KTEsduYp4cnS9aYeUuYF
/ip4/5.161.92.43/udp/4001/quic/p2p/12D3KooWFFhc8fPYnQXdWBCowxSV21EFYin3rU27p3NVgSMjN41k/p2p-circuit/p2p/12D3KooWFkPkpLWTKDDbE4Dtdknrhj17KTEsduYp4cnS9aYeUuYF

That answers my question:

Does it use a relay for the pings?

Yes. PeerID 12D3KooWFFhc8fPYnQXdWBCowxSV21EFYin3rU27p3NVgSMjN41k acts as a relay to 12D3KooWFkPkpLWTKDDbE4Dtdknrhj17KTEsduYp4cnS9aYeUuYF