Staggering and Fragmentation for Improved Large Message Handling in libp2p GossipSub

The libp2p GossipSub protocol leverages a full-message mesh with a lower node degree and a more densely connected metadata-only (gossip) mesh. This combination allows an efficient dissemination of messages in unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. However, GossipSub needs to consider message size, which is crucial for the efficient operation of many applications, such as handling large Ethereum blocks. This paper proposes modifications to improve GossipSub’s performance when transmitting large messages. We evaluate the proposed improvements using the shadow simulator. Our results show that the proposed improvements significantly enhance GossipSub’s performance for large message transmissions in sizeable networks.