1.3.3 Discovery

The Peer Channel Protocol uses a discovery service as a repository to store and retrieve each node's Endpoint Information (section 3.1.1). All nodes participating in a given mesh use the same discovery service. A node uses the discovery service to obtain connection information for a few nodes already present in the mesh that are attempting to join the mesh. The node uses this information to establish neighbor connections. The discovery service can return endpoints that are not currently active due to transient conditions. Connecting nodes can handle such error conditions by requesting additional connection information from the discovery service and then retrying the connect operations.