Optimized Binary Transport

Sobamail uses various deduplication and compression techniques to ensure data hits the wire only once. This technology is also used to enable seamless sharing of attachments up to 1GB.

Application Platform

Sobamail apps are made of two parts: The Mutator module and the frontend:

• The frontend is built using standard web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) and can be developed like any modern web application.
• The Mutator module is a Javascript module that runs in Sobamail's custom V8-based application environment.

The runtime environment only provides data operations that preserve code monotonicity to ensure conflict-free synchronization between all replicas of an application instance.

Mutators are not versioned in a traditional way -- they are identified by the cryptographic hash of their root module, which in turn imports other modules using their cryptographic hashes.

This ensures that replicated tasks are only executed by the code that produced them on every peer ensuring convergence to the same state on all instances of a mailbox -- assuming backwards compatible schema changes during version progression.

Applications can freely import and utilize each other's exported functions and classes, enabling seamless data interoperability and ensuring consistent data usage across systems.

Application Interoperability

Sobamail applications can freely import and utilize each other's exported functions and classes, enabling seamless data interoperability and ensuring consistent data usage across systems.

Peer-to-Peer Communication

Sobamail implements its own dynamic PKI where each replica of a user's mailbox is issued its own certificate authority.

When two Sobamail instances discover each other on the local network they exchange their public certificates via central servers and verify each other's certificates by establishing direct connections. If successful, they can send messages and attachments directly to each other using a secure and verified channel.

The certificates do need to be kept fresh, so occasional connection to the central servers is still needed to maintain P2P connectivity.

All message exchange is also eventually synchronized to the Sobamail servers so all replicas of a user's mailbox remain consistent.