alktunnels/docs/research/phase-0-findings.md

status, last_updated

status	last_updated
draft	2026-09-05

alktunnels — Phase 0 Research Findings

This document captures Phase 0 (Exploration) findings and open design questions for the alktunnels crate. The objective of Phase 0 per docs/sdd_process.md is: "Capture vision and guiding principles; research options; validate approaches; converge on a recommended approach." It is the input to Phase 1 (Architecture), where the Architect will produce docs/architecture/ specs, ADRs, and open questions.

Drafted 2026-09-05, emerging from the initial setup discussion. The crate is the sibling of alktty (alk/tty — terminal sessions) on the alkcall substrate: where alktty multiplexes one service with a fixed five-stream channel structure, alktunnels generalizes the tunnel handler shape to arbitrary bidirectional tunnels in the ssh -L / ssh -D sense — TCP, UDP, unix sockets, and other stream or datagram substrates.

The 2026-09-05 first revision adds the tun2proxy UDP gateway prior art (OQ-TN-01, OQ-TN-02, OQ-TN-07, OQ-TN-10) and the transport story clarification (TCP vs QUIC at the channels layer, invisible to this crate — §What is already settled). This prior art was discussed with the POC agent around the alknet-channels POC but never documented; it is captured here so it survives into the spec.

What is already settled

The foundation is POC-validated and ADR-pinned; this crate is not starting from zero. It inherits:

• The demux→Connection→handler→mux path — validated by the alknet-channels POC (Target 3), now production alkcall channels. The tunnel payload is raw bytes inside a channels data channel; channels strips its 8-byte header transparently (alknet ADR-093 / alkcall ADR-035).
• The two-pump handler shape — one pump per direction, each pump MUST shut down the opposite sink on completion (try_join! alone deadlocks; alknet ADR-078). POC-validated with a 1 MiB backpressure test. This crate is the second two-pump consumer the ADR deferred helper extraction for (the first was the POC's tunnel handler; SSH direct-tcpip would be a later third).
• The producer/consumer model — producer registers openable channels via ChannelCore::register_openable (authorization for free via AccessControl); consumer opens tunnel channels via ChannelClient (alkcall ADR-037, ADR-043). Connection direction is independent of tunnel direction.
• The backend inversion point pattern — substrate-specific types (TcpStream, UdpSocket, unix sockets) confined to feature-gated backend modules, injected at the assembly layer, never imported from the shared/producer/consumer modules (alktty TtyBackend precedent).
• The wasm-clean default crate — protocol-only code compiles to wasm32-unknown-unknown; socket/platform I/O is feature-gated (alktty precedent).
• The relay story — tunnels traverse alkcall hub relays transparently via byte-for-byte data-channel forwarding with ID rewrite (alkcall ADR-042). No tunnel-specific relay work.
• The transport story — the underlying channels transport is TCP or QUIC (QUIC preferred) but that is the alkcall layer's concern, not this crate's: the tunnel protocol sees a BiStream and is transport-agnostic like the sibling crates. UDP tunneling (below) rides the same chunk stream; the stream-vs-datagram question is about what the tunnel protocol frames inside the channel, not about the transport.

Prior art: the hub-owns-the-connection model (OQ-TN-01, OQ-TN-03, OQ-TN-04, OQ-TN-08)

Discussed 2026-09-05. The standing stance across the alk* crates: the hub owns the connection and explicitly proxies to expose resources for others. A produced resource is not a socket — it is an ACL-scoped virtual resource on the side that can reach the real target. Applied to tunnels, this dissolves the SSH direction model:

• Role follows the resource. Whoever can reach the target is the producer (registers openable tunnel channels via ChannelCore::register_openable, dials/serves the target); whoever wants the bytes is the consumer (opens channels via ChannelClient). This holds for both SSH -L and -R: in both, the entry-point side opens the channel (consumer) and the target side handles the open (producer) — the only difference is which machine hosts the entry point, which is assembly-layer wiring, not protocol.
• The "exposed port" is a virtual port. The far side may think it exposed a port on the remote end; what actually exists is an ACL-scoped resource in the connection/identity registry — the same shape as operation registration, not a bind. Example: a self-hosted gitea (HTTP in a docker container, really binding a port) is tunneled to the hub; the hub proxies the tunnel to consumers whose ACL grants access to the gitea HTTP service. A SOCKS5 service is the same shape, further downstream.
• The hub proxy is a producer wrapping a consumer. The proxy is an assembly-layer construct. On leg 1 (gitea side ↔ hub): gitea side is producer, hub is consumer. On leg 2 (hub ↔ service consumer): the hub re-produces the resource ACL-scoped — producer wrapping its leg-1 consumer role. Data path per hop is the same two-pump shape; the consumer opens a channel naming the resource, the producer's open handler dials the target. This means the hub terminates and re-produces rather than relaying byte-for-byte — unlike alkcall ADR-042's transparent data-channel relay — because ACL must apply per hop. (ADR-042 relays remain valid for transports that don't need per-hop ACL; the hub's tunnel proxy is the explicit-ACL path.)
• -D (dynamic/SOCKS) composes. A SOCKS5 server at some assembly layer is just a consumer that opens channels with per-connection dynamic targets, gated by the producer's target policy. Not a base crate concern (same conclusion as the original half-answer, now with the mechanism named).
• No forced binding, everywhere (OQ-TN-04 resolved). Binding is always assembly-layer and optional, on either side. The protocol never binds: a producer "produces a resource" (which may or may not correspond to a local bind — a docker container's port, a unix socket, an in-process service); a consumer "consumes it." The SSH mental image of "expose a port" is an illusion the assembly layer may create locally; the protocol only ever carries produce/consume bookkeeping.

Model, one sentence: a producer produces a resource (a stream of basically anything, if TCP and UDP are supported); a consumer consumes it; direction, bind, and ACL scoping are assembly-layer concerns wrapped around that pair.

Residue (folded into other OQs):

• How does a consumer discover produced resources — resolved 2026-09-05: the existing bidirectional ACL-filtered ops listing (openable channels are operations, alkcall ADR-047). See OQ-TN-08.
• Dynamic-target policy for -D-style opens — dissolved 2026-09-05: -D is "just tunnel a socks5 connection"; target selection lives in the socks5 protocol at the producing side, governed by the same op-level ACL. See OQ-TN-08.
• Whether the hub proxy needs anything from this crate (a re-produce helper? typed open-handler composition?) or composes from the public producer/consumer surface as-is → spec question for Phase 1, tracked here as part of OQ-TN-05.

Prior art: tun2proxy UDP gateway (OQ-TN-01, OQ-TN-02, OQ-TN-07, OQ-TN-10)

/workspace/tun2proxy/src/udpgw.rs implements a UDP gateway over a TCP stream — structurally the same problem this crate faces for UDP tunnels over channels data channels. Discussed with the alknet-channels POC agent as the example of "UDP over a stream substrate," but never documented. Key mechanics, all of which generalize:

• Per-datagram length framing over the stream — the packet format is LEN(u16 BE) | FLAGS(u8) | CONN_ID(u16) | [SOCKS5 address] | DATA (udpgw.rs:82-88). Boundary preservation is re-added by the protocol, not by the substrate: exactly the "length-prefix each datagram inside the channel" half-answer in OQ-TN-02, proven in production.
• SOCKS5 address format travels per data packet — ATYP (0x01 IPv4 / 0x03 domain / 0x04 IPv6) + variable address + port (udpgw.rs:68-76). This is concrete prior art for OQ-TN-01's addressing: a scheme-tagged addressing encoding with v4/v6/domain coverage already standardized. Note the asymmetry with TCP tunnels: for UDP, the remote endpoint is per-datagram, not per-channel.
• One stream carries many UDP flows — CONN_ID(u16) multiplexes associations over a single gateway connection (udpgw.rs:66), with keepalive (0x01) and error (0x20) flag packets as the only non-data frame types (udpgw.rs:21-26). This is the "one channel = one association, per-endpoint multiplexing inside" half-answer in OQ-TN-02, with the refinement that the per-endpoint multiplexing key (CONN_ID) is protocol-level, allocated by the client, u16.
• Flow lifecycle is packet-level — udp_timeout idle expiry, keepalive_time heartbeats on idle connections (UDPGW_KEEPALIVE_TIME = 30s, udpgw.rs:16), and an MTU cap (parse_udp_response rejects data.len() > udp_mtu, udpgw.rs:527). Also UDPGW_MAX_CONNECTIONS = 5 pooled gateway connections above the packet layer — a throughput choice, not a protocol requirement; channels gives us N channels already.
• Implications for alktunnels:
  • UDP boundary preservation over the chunk stream is validated prior art, not speculation — raises confidence in the OQ-TN-02 half-answer considerably.
  • The frame-type set (DATA/KEEPALIVE/ERR) is a useful minimal vocabulary — historically mapped onto OQ-TN-09's establishment question, now superseded there by alkcall ADR-049 (establishment is the open op's reply, not an in-stream frame). KEEPALIVE and ERR both drop (channels owns liveness; establishment is call-level). The vocabulary survives only as anti-prior-art context.
  • Per-datagram addressing (SOCKS5-style) vs per-channel addressing (fixed target at open) is a real fork for the params design: TCP tunnels fix the target at open; UDP associations may either fix one endpoint at open or carry per-datagram addresses like udpgw. This interaction is unresolved and feeds OQ-TN-01 + OQ-TN-07.
  • NAT/keepalive concerns partially disappear on channels: the underlying transport (QUIC/TCP) handles connection keepalive, and channel liveness is the channels layer's concern. The tunnel protocol likely needs only flow-level idle expiry, not transport-level keepalive packets — TBD in the spec.

Prior art: the alktty stream-splitting pattern (OQ-TN-09, OQ-TN-05)

Discussed 2026-09-05. alktty tunnels io-like streams: the adapter splits the BiStream from accept_bi into read/write halves (tokio::io::split), wraps each half in a ChunkReader/ChunkWriter (wire.rs — the 5-byte [stream_type: u8][length: u32 be][payload] codec), and pumps chunks between the wire halves and the backend's TtyHandle halves. Strip packets on the way in, wrap packets on the way out; everything above the codec sees plain AsyncRead/AsyncWrite.

The proposal: that same pattern (or close) may be the tunnel pattern. A tunnel is then literally "tty without the five stream types" — split the channel's BiStream, wrap the halves in a codec, pump to/from substrate halves. What differs per concern is only the codec and the far-end handle:

	alktty	alktunnels (TCP)	alktunnels (UDP)
wire codec	5-byte, 5 stream types	raw pass-through or minimal framing	length-prefixed datagrams (tun2proxy-style)
far end	TtyHandle (stdin/stdout/stderr/ctrl)	TcpStream split halves	UdpSocket + flow table
pumps	3 (stdout/stderr + stdin, exit future coordinates)	2 (the ADR-078 shape)	2 + flow expiry

Implications:

• OQ-TN-09: partially superseded by alkcall ADR-049. The establishment/error half is resolved at the call layer (the open op replies channel:open_failed; no in-stream establishment frame). What the ctrl-frame pattern still informs: whether a mid-stream control frame is ever needed (v1 likely not — see OQ-TN-09's resolved status), and the alktty zero-length-sentinel EOF semantics carry over unchanged either way.
• OQ-TN-05 (backend trait) gets a concrete shape to judge. If tunnels are "split + wrap + pump," the far-end handle is just "(AsyncRead + AsyncWrite) halves" for stream substrates — which is either a very thin trait or no trait (fn returning boxed halves). The UDP case's flow table is the real differentiator to design around, not the stream case.
• Possible convergence with OQ-TN-06 (two-pump helper). If the pump loop shape is identical to alktty's modulo the number of pumps, a shared helper extraction (this crate's second-consumer moment, alknet ADR-078) should be evaluated against alktty's pump_session too — the convergence test the ADR asked for may be nearly free.
• Wasm story intact — the codec is pure byte manipulation; the split/pump plumbing is tokio-async, no substrate types in the protocol layer. Same as alktty.

Codec direction set 2026-09-06 (discussion): raw pass-through for stream substrates, u16 length-prefix for UDP — no 5-byte header. Phase 1 ADR, before the first consumer.

Rationale (structural, not stylistic): alktty's 5-byte [stream_type:u8][len:u32] exists because five logical streams share one BiStream — the type byte is a sub-demux key. A tunnel has exactly one data stream per direction (the channel's own read/write halves), so there is nothing to demux and no per-chunk type byte. TCP needs no length prefix either: the channels layer already length-prefixes every chunk (8-byte header), so the codec is pure pass-through. Only UDP needs boundary re-framing (datagram boundaries do not survive the chunk stream), and u16 suffices — UDP's max payload is 65507 < 65535.

Per-chunk wire overhead (data chunks, both directions):

	channels header	tunnel codec	total
alktty in channels	8 B	5 B (type + len)	13 B
tunnel TCP	8 B	0 B	8 B
tunnel UDP	8 B	2 B (len:u16)	10 B

Calibration: udpgw's packet header is 5 bytes + a per-datagram SOCKS5 address (its CONN_ID/FLAGS vocabulary is dropped per OQ-TN-02); a DNS-sized datagram (~100 B) pays ~3% for boundary framing.

Trade-offs accepted:

• No in-band control path for TCP channels, ever (any future mid-stream signaling is a wire break). Post-ADR-049 this is clean — establishment is call-level (channel:open_failed), the survey found no mid-stream control need, and the escape hatch is protocol-level (a new ALPN is cheap; a wire change is not). The udpgw KEEPALIVE/ERR vocabulary is dropped per OQ-TN-02.
• Sentinel collision does not exist across layers: the UDP codec's len=0 means empty datagram (legal in UDP; DNS uses it, e.g. TCP length-prefix 0), while EOF is the channels-level sentinel on the BiStream (length=0 in the channels 8-byte header). They live at different layers and do not interact.
• UDP-specific framing lives only in the UDP path; a hypothetical future multi-endpoint UDP gateway resource would carry its own self-describing framing inside the datagram payloads (udpgw precedent, OQ-TN-02) — invisible to this base codec.

Remaining for the Phase 1 codec ADR: confirm len=0 empty-datagram semantics (send allowed? receive maps to a zero-payload datagram), and whether the UDP length prefix rides u16 BE (leaned) or a varint (rejected for v1 simplicity — datagrams are MTU-bounded anyway).

Open Questions

These are the design questions Phase 0 must resolve (or explicitly defer) before the architecture spec. They are numbered OQ-TN-01.. so they can be referenced, tracked, and promoted into docs/architecture/open-questions.md in Phase 1. Half-answers and hunches are marked as such — the point of this document is to hold them without forcing premature decisions.

OQ-TN-01: Target addressing format

What does the tunnel params on channel/open look like? alknet ADR-071 §ALPN table noted alknet/tunnel as [0, 1] data in/out only, but the addressing scheme was never decided. It must cover at minimum:

• TCP dial (host:port)
• UDP (associate-style or endpoint-style — see OQ-TN-02)
• Unix domain sockets (path)
• Direction (who dials the target — see OQ-TN-03, resolved)
• Bind/listen vs dial semantics (see OQ-TN-04, mostly resolved)

Considerations:

• params is ALPN-specific JSON, interpreted by the open handler, not by the channels layer (alknet ADR-075 / alkcall ADR-039). alktty's precedent is the NegotiateRequest shape — a self-contained JSON object carried in the open op.
• The addressing string is wire-stable once a consumer exists (one-way door). It must be substrate-extensible without format changes (a new substrate should be an additive scheme value, not a v2 format).
• Prior art to survey: SSH forwarding models (direct-tcpip, forwarded-tcpip), SOCKS5 addressing (ATYP + addr + port), russh (/workspace/russh — note: russh has no UDP channel type at all, so there is no direct-udp-style prior art there; still useful for channel-open framing and addressing-intel generally).
• ALPN convention check (2026-09-05): the ALPN prefix swap alknet/ → alk/ happened alkcall v0.1.1, before the first published consumer. Everything in this crate's docs referencing alknet/tunnel means alk/tunnel — a small thing, but docs/ADRs must not perpetuate the old prefix or consumers will bake it in.

Reframe 2026-09-05 — this is partly an XY problem. The rich "remote addressing" framing was chasing the wrong thing. Except in the -D/dynamic case (which composes at the assembly layer), a tunnel is either TCP or UDP, and params need only identify a produced resource — not carry a general-purpose address. The producer owns where the resource comes from (a local port, a docker container's port, an in-process service, a unix socket — its problem, most likely a local port). So params reduce to:

1. Which resource (a produced resource identifier — stable name or target address, still to decide),
2. Substrate discriminator (tcp / udp / extensible) — so UDP is structurally supported from day one even if the vast majority of use is TCP.

Rich in-band addressing (SOCKS5 ATYP, per-datagram remote addresses) enters only through the -D/dynamic-target composition path (OQ-TN-03/OQ-TN-08 residue), not through the base open-op params.

Status: mostly resolved 2026-09-05 (pending the resource-naming and discovery residue). Direction of travel:

• params = self-contained JSON object in the open op (alktty NegotiateRequest precedent) — accepted path.
• params identify a produced resource + substrate discriminator; producer owns the backing. No URL-style general addressing.
• Residue: stable resource name vs target address as the identifier shape; discovery resolved 2026-09-05 — see OQ-TN-08 (the existing ACL-filtered ops listing IS tunnel-resource discovery, since openable channels are operations per alkcall ADR-047); exact JSON field layout (Phase 1 spec, ADR before first consumer — wire-stable once published).

Survey input 2026-09-06 (ssh-socks5-survey.md): SSH's direct-tcpip payload reduces to "target + informational originator" — the originator pair has no analogue here (ACL rides the channels open-op machinery), supporting the two-field reframe. OpenSSH's direct-streamlocal extension is the extensibility template: new substrate = same open-op shape, degenerate address slots, new type string → new substrate value, not a format change. SOCKS5 ATYP is not needed in base params (dynamic-path addressing only). Minimal shape: { "resource": <id>, "substrate": "tcp" | "udp" | <extensible> }.

OQ-TN-02: Datagram substrates (UDP) — boundary preservation

Does a UDP tunnel preserve datagram boundaries end-to-end, or does the tunnel present a byte-stream abstraction to the consumer (boundaries lost, re-chunked arbitrarily)?

• Channels is a chunk stream with bounded buffers; the zero-length chunk is the EOF sentinel — datagram boundaries are not preserved by the substrate (alknet ADR-071/093; the POC only exercised TCP).
• Corrected 2026-09-06 (ssh-socks5-survey.md): an earlier line here claimed "SSH's -D UDP associate tunnels UDP as a stream" — a category error. SSH has no UDP forwarding at all (RFC 4254 defines only TCP/X11/session channels; russh is grep-confirmed UDP-free; only SSH3 — a different HTTP/3 protocol — has direct-udp). SSH -D carries only the SOCKS5 TCP control connection. The real UDP-over-stream prior art is tun2proxy udpgw (§Prior art) and SOCKS5's own UDP relay.
• iroh and quinn-proxy-poc have native datagram transports; tun2proxy has a full UDP-over-TCP model worth reading.
• Boundary preservation is a wire-format decision (per-datagram length framing inside the BiStream) and would need an ADR + possibly a BAST document (AGENTS.md convention 12). Boundary loss is cheaper but changes what protocols can ride the tunnel (DNS? QUIC? game traffic?).
• Datagrams also raise multiplexing questions TCP does not: one UDP "association" carries many remote endpoints — does one tunnel channel carry one endpoint or many, and how are per-endpoint replies routed?

Status: resolved as a split by path, 2026-09-06 (survey ssh-socks5-survey.md + tun2proxy prior art):

• Base open-op UDP resources: endpoint-at-open. The resource identifies the endpoint; one channel = one UDP flow (or one pinned association). Aligns with resource naming (OQ-TN-01); per-datagram addressing would reintroduce the "general addressing in params" the reframe removed. Boundary preservation inside the channel stays per-datagram length framing (tun2proxy-proven) — endpoint-at-open is about addressing, not about dropping the LEN prefix.
• Dynamic/-D UDP (SOCKS5-style): per-datagram addressing inside the tunnel payload (SOCKS5 UDP header or udpgw format), composed at the assembly layer, never in base params.
• The channel ID replaces udpgw's CONN_ID — a conn-id inside the channel would be a second demux layer (AGENTS.md convention 10). One channel per UDP flow; no protocol-level flow key.
• KEEPALIVE drops — udpgw's heartbeats exist for NAT-traversed long-lived TCP; channels transport liveness is the alkcall layer's concern. Flow-level idle expiry remains producer-side bookkeeping.
• A UDP gateway resource (multi-endpoint, udpgw-shaped) remains possible inside a channel as self-describing framing — invisible to base params, keeping OQ-TN-07 option A viable. A targeted POC (OQ-TN-10 #1) remains +EV for the channels-layer fit (chunk-size vs datagram-size, MTU vs bounded buffers, idle expiry).

Mandate strengthened 2026-09-07 (reverse POC finding F-2): the length-framed codec is not just boundary preservation — it is mandatory for correctness on UDP. In the raw pass-through pump shape, an empty datagram is a zero-byte read from the substrate adapter — indistinguishable from EOF (tokio::io::copy treats Ok(0) as end-of-stream and shuts the pump down). An empty datagram and the zero-length EOF sentinel are the same wire shape at the pump level; the [len: u16 BE] prefix makes an empty datagram two bytes, unambiguous. UDP rides the codec, never raw pass-through; raw pass-through stays stream-substrate-only (where a zero-byte read is genuinely EOF). Validated from a second angle by the reverse-flow POC (reverse-poc-summary.md §F-2, pinned by an executable test).

OQ-TN-03: Direction semantics (-L / -R / dynamic)

Status: resolved 2026-09-05 by the hub-owns-the-connection model (§Prior art: the hub-owns-the-connection model). There is no protocol-level direction: role follows the resource. Whoever can reach the target is the producer (registers openable channels); whoever wants the bytes is the consumer (opens channels). SSH -L and -R are the same producer/consumer pair with the entry point on different machines — assembly-layer wiring, not protocol. The "exposed port" is a virtual, ACL-scoped resource on the producing side; the hub proxy is a producer wrapping a consumer. -D/SOCKS composes as a consumer opening channels with per-connection dynamic targets, gated by the producer's target policy (OQ-TN-08) — not a base-crate concern. Original question retained below for context.

Considerations (original):

SSH has three forwarding flavors; the crate must model them without "server/client" framing:

• -L (local forward): consumer dials a local port; producer dials the target. Channels flows consumer→producer; target dial happens on the producer side. This is the POC's shape.
• -R (remote forward): producer (or a third party) listens; the consumer's side dials or accepts incoming connections and asks the other side to carry them. Channels flows producer→consumer.
• -D (dynamic/SOCKS): one side runs a SOCKS5 server; the target is chosen per-connection by the client. Addressing arrives per-channel, not per-tunnel-registration.

Both sides can be producer and consumer simultaneously (alkcall ADR-022/037 direction semantics), so the model must not bake direction into the connection. The open questions:

• Is direction a field in params, or two distinct open-handler shapes / ALPNs?
• How does -R register availability (the side that will carry traffic advertises listen targets)? Does it interact with channel/open at all, or is it a call-level operation ("please open a tunnel channel to me when a local accept happens")?
• Dynamic (-D) may not be a tunnel concern at all — it may compose as "SOCKS5 server implemented over alktunnels dial primitives" in a separate crate. Keep or cut for v1?

Status: resolved 2026-09-05 by the hub-owns-the-connection model; the last open thread (the -R advertisement/lifecycle surface) closed 2026-09-07 by the reverse-flow POC (reverse-poc-summary.md): no advertisement op is needed. The listener is the initiating side's own local resource — it binds (assembly layer, OQ-TN-04) and opens tunnel channels toward the serving side per accept; a far-side listener ("expose a port on your end") is a producer-side listen establisher over the same open op, not a new mechanism. The hunch above is superseded: -L and -R are the same open op with the entry point on different machines; -D composes on top and stays out of scope for the base crate.

OQ-TN-04: No forced local binding

A tunnel must not require the producer (or consumer) to bind a local port. The POC's shape dialed a target from the handler; binding is optional and belongs to the caller (assembly layer), not the protocol crate. The API surface must support:

• Dial flows with no local bind (POC shape) — covered.
• Listen flows where the binding happens on one side only.
• Unbound/abstract flows (e.g. unix socketpair-style, stdio bridges, in-process pipes) where neither side binds.

The protocol layer must express "carry bytes between this target and this channel" without assuming either endpoint is a bound socket. Substrate modules (behind feature flags) own actual bind() calls; the protocol owns bookkeeping only.

Status: open — mostly resolved (2026-09-05, see §Prior art: the hub-owns-the-connection model): binding is always assembly-layer and optional, on either side; the protocol never binds. What remains is the concrete API surface — who calls what to start a tunnel in each mode (produce-with-dial, produce-without-dial/accept-style, consume). This is now a spec-shape task, not a research question.

OQ-TN-05: Backend inversion point — is there a TunnelBackend trait?

alktty has TtyBackend because backends (local PTY, docker, SSH) produce handles and the adapter pumps them. For tunnels, the producer side's substrate action is narrower — dial a target, or accept on a listener — so the question:

• Is a TunnelBackend-style trait needed at all, or is the two-pump handler + feature-gated substrate modules (dial/listen helpers) the whole story, with the assembly layer wiring substrate streams directly?
• If a trait: what is the handle type? A tunnel "handle" is just an AsyncRead + AsyncWrite stream (or a datagram endpoint) — much thinner than TtyHandle's stdin/stdout/stderr/exit-code quadruple. The trait may collapse to "produce a boxed stream for this target" plus a listener variant.
• Backpressure/limits come from channels (AGENTS.md convention 10); the backend trait must not add a second layer of them.
• New sub-question from the hub model (2026-09-05, §Prior art): the hub's tunnel proxy re-produces a resource it consumes (producer wrapping a consumer). Does the proxy need a composition helper from this crate, or does it assemble from the public producer/consumer surface as-is? If a helper is warranted, it may share shape with the substrate dial/listen trait — which would argue for the trait.

Status: resolved for stream substrates, 2026-09-06 (POC). pump_halves is generic over (AsyncRead, AsyncWrite) halves — TCP contributes into_split() halves, UDP contributes the UdpHalf socket adapter, the pump never knows which. "Produce boxed halves for a resource" is a function, not a trait; the TunnelBackend trait question resolves to no trait for substrate access. The only remaining thread is the hub re-produce composition question (above) — a Phase 1 spec question, and now decidable against the validated producer/consumer surface.

OQ-TN-06: The two-pump helper — extract now?

alknet ADR-078 deferred helper extraction until a second two-pump consumer exists ("a genuine deferral... the contract is decided (shutdown-on- completion), only the extraction is deferred"). This crate is that second consumer (POC tunnel was the first; SSH direct-tcpip would be a third).

• Does the helper live here (as a pub utility other handler crates can use), or upstream in alkcall (which already owns core types)?
• Shape: pump_bidi(recv, send) -> (Future, Future) returning both pumps with the shutdown-on-completion wired in? Or a join_two_pumps(a, b) combinator?
• alknet ADR-057 (two-pump helper extraction OQ) noted the helper from one consumer would bake in a wrong shape; with two consumers the shapes should be compared before extraction.

Status: open — decide when the first real tunnel handler is written; not a blocker for the spec. Half-answer: the helper probably belongs upstream (alkcall, near the channels-adapter handler-integration conventions) but only if the two shapes genuinely converge. Convergence input 2026-09-06 (POC): the producer pump (pump_halves) and the consumer pump (take_halves + copy) are the same shape modulo channel side — the ADR-078 convergence test is satisfied; extraction is decidable in Phase 1. Also surfaced by the POC: the OpenHandler JoinHandle semantics (see poc-summary.md § Issues Surfaced #1) are where such a helper would pin the teardown contract.

RESOLVED 2026-09-07 — the helper landed upstream in alkcall 0.6.0 (review 007 R-03, ADR-050): alkcall::channels::pump_bidi(channel, peer_read, peer_write) -> (u64, u64). Shape as this OQ sketched it — two pumps, shutdown-on-completion wired in, copy counts returned for observability, errors EOF-shaped (no Err state — a mid-stream error is an abrupt close, so an io::Result would be dead code). The POC is cited in the ADR as convergence input alongside alktty's channels session and the assembly-layer copies. alktunnels consumes it; the POC's pump_halves is now prior art only. The JoinHandle lifetime contract (R-02) is documented on the OpenHandler type: await the helper inline inside the handler's task — early return is teardown-at-birth.

OQ-TN-07: ALPN strategy

This crate owns the alk/tunnel-family ALPN(s). alkcall ADR-004: one ALPN per protocol; alk/ prefix. If stream (TCP/unix) and datagram (UDP) tunnels get distinct ALPNs, the split must be decided before the first consumer — ALPN strings are wire-stable once published.

• Option A: single alk/tunnel ALPN; substrate is a params field (and datagram framing, if any, is self-describing inside the channel).
• Option B: alk/tunnel (stream) + alk/tunnel-dgram (datagram), so the wire framing differs per ALPN cleanly.
• Channels' params is ALPN-specific, and the open-handler registry dispatches per ALPN — both options are cheap mechanically; the cost is consumer-side API bifurcation (two session types vs one with a substrate enum).

Status: option A strengthened, 2026-09-06 (survey ssh-socks5-survey.md): SSH uses one channel mechanism for all forwarding types (the type string is per-open metadata, not a separate transport); SOCKS5 runs CONNECT and UDP ASSOCIATE over one control connection with a CMD discriminator; udpgw proves datagram framing self-describes over a stream. With OQ-TN-02 resolved as endpoint-at- open for base UDP resources, the substrate discriminator in params tells the handler which framing to expect — exactly option A's shape. Option B (alk/tunnel-dgram) remains defensible only if Phase 1 wants structurally different framing from byte zero with no params-dependent dispatch; prior art gives no reason to prefer that.

OQ-TN-08: Access control and ownership scope

Tunnels reach local networks — the open gate is the security boundary. Shape follows alktty: TUNNEL_OPEN_SCOPE scope-gate, and the channels path gets AccessControl wiring for free via ChannelCore::register_openable. Open sub-questions:

• Should ownership (OwnershipProvider.owns(...)) be consulted for tunnel targets, and what is the resource identity of a tunnel target (a host:port? a registered tunnel name?), given targets may be arbitrary strings and wildcard targets (0.0.0.0/0-style egress) may be intentionally allowed for some identities?
• Is there a target-allowlist concept (per-identity reachable target sets), and does it live in AccessControl or in the open handler's params validation?

Status: mostly resolved 2026-09-05 — this OQ pointed at a general conceptual tangle ("the host owns the resource and proxies on top of that" — how does that manifest for tunnels?), and the resolution is the same posture alktty already uses:

• Assume the resource is owned by the other side of the connection. At these protocol-crate levels (alktunnels, like alktty), the protocol works under the assumption that a produced resource belongs to the far side — so the ACL story is exactly alkcall's existing op-level ACL. No new policy layer, no target allowlists, no tunnel-specific ownership machinery. The actual proxy/overlay mechanism (hub workers connecting in and exposing tunnels, the hub providing an overlay to those resources based on the other side's ACL) is a downstream (assembly-layer) concern.
• Discovery is the existing bidirectional ops listing. alkcall already has an underlying bidirectional discovery mechanism — each side can obtain the list of ops available to it (ACL-filtered). Since openable channels are operations (alkcall ADR-047), that listing is tunnel-resource discovery: a consumer asks "what ops are available to me" and produced tunnel resources appear there, scoped by identity. This is exactly how a consumer learns a socks5 tunnel, a postgres TCP tunnel, or a redis tunnel is an available resource. Examples of the pattern: services typically served over a VPN or SSH tunnels (postgres, redis, gitea HTTP) — workers connect to a hub, expose those tunnels, and the hub proxies them per-ACL.
• -D simplifies to "just tunnel a socks5 connection." The socks5 server lives on the producing side; the consumer opens an ordinary tunnel channel to that resource and speaks socks5 inside it. Target selection happens in the socks5 protocol at the far side — not in tunnel params — so the previously-tracked "dynamic-target policy hook for -D-style opens" residue dissolves: whatever ACL governs the socks5 resource governs everything reachable through it, plus whatever policy the socks5 implementation itself applies downstream.

Residue for Phase 1 (spec-shape, not research): resolved 2026-09-06 by alkcall 0.5.0 (review 006 E-02): OperationSpec.description (with_description) lands additively and round-trips through services/schema / from_call / op/register, disclosed by services/list and services/list-peers when set. The tunnel open op carries its description; the live resource-enumeration half (OQ-40) stays deferred and is not needed for v1.

Upstream posture (2026-09-05, updated 2026-09-06): we own the upstream, and the rule is to make asks early. The E-01/E-02 sweep (alkcall review 006, filed from this crate's Phase 0) is the working proof: the establishment phase (ADR-049), the typed ChannelOpenError, and OperationSpec.description all landed in 0.5.0 within a day of being filed — alktunnels was the consumer that pulled them through. Future upstream asks follow the same path.

OQ-TN-09: Lifecycle, teardown, and error reporting

The two-pump shape gives byte-level teardown for free (EOF sentinels; channels drops per-channel senders on transport EOF — alknet ADR-078, POC issue #6). What's missing is the error/level above bytes:

• How does a failed target dial reach the consumer (e.g. "connection refused to 10.0.0.5:80")? Is there a structured error frame in the channel before close, a channel/close with reason, or call-level error on the open op?
• Is there a "tunnel established/failed" ack before byte pumping starts (alktty has the negotiation frame; the POC's tunnel handler had nothing — it dialed and pumped)?
• Half-open semantics: one direction EOFs, the other keeps pumping (standard two-pump behavior) — is that always desired, or does the consumer need a "close both" control?

Status: resolved 2026-09-06 by alkcall ADR-049 (alkcall 0.5.0, review 006 E-01 — the establishment gap filed from this crate's Phase 0 pass). The in-band control-frame hunch below is superseded: establishment failure is now the open op's reply, not a frame on the channel stream.

• The producer's tunnel open op registers via ChannelCore::register_openable_with_establisher; the establisher (OpenEstablisher) runs as an awaited, bounded establishment phase — semantically validate params, dial the target — before the open op replies. On failure the just-allocated channel is torn down (allocation and teardown balance; ledger un-increment) and the consumer receives channel:open_failed with details: {reason, message}, reason ∈ dial_failed / unknown_resource / resource_shortage / handler_error / timeout — the SSH contract consumer-visibly (a failed open never returns a channel_id). No phantom channel, no establishment frame needed on the data stream.
• Implementation note (ADR-049 amendment): the establisher takes (input, auth) only — the channel's yield-once BiStream belongs exclusively to the pump handler. Amendment 2 (alkcall 0.6.0, review 007 R-01) filled the reserved Establishment field: Establishment::new(plan) carries the dialed handle to the pump handler via its plan parameter (ChannelPlan — typed-opaque Arc<dyn Any + Send + Sync>; downcast happens in this crate). The POC's side-channel HandleHandoff is dead — no handoff map, no same-resource race; the establisher just returns Ok(Establishment::new(dialed)).
• What remains for this crate's Phase 1 ADR (narrowed from the original frame-vocabulary question):
  • Half-open semantics: one direction EOFs, the other keeps pumping (standard two-pump behavior) — the only establishment/teardown question not answered upstream. Dial errors are fully establishment-phase now; byte-level EOFs stay per-direction (unchanged).
  • Whether the tunnel ever needs a mid-stream control frame (post-establishment). Per ADR-049 §6's pinned posture, pump-phase failures are EOF-shaped by design; the SSH/SOCKS5 survey found no prior art for in-stream control after establishment beyond udpgw's KEEPALIVE (dropped — channels owns liveness). v1 likely needs none; if a UDP flow table ever needs in-band signaling, that is a substrate-framing decision, not a base-wire one.

Original question (retained for context): how does a failed target dial reach the consumer, is there an establishment ack before byte pumping, and what are the half-open semantics?

OQ-TN-10: POC scope for what remains unvalidated

The alknet-channels POC validated TCP only. Candidate targeted POCs Phase 0 may need (in rough priority order, per the SDD process's "validate promising approaches"):

1. UDP tunnel POC — boundary-preserving length framing over a channels channel, per-endpoint multiplexing inside one association, backpressure behavior. Partially derisked by the tun2proxy prior art (§Prior art) — the POC now mainly validates channels-layer fit: chunk-size vs datagram-size interaction, MTU cap against the channels bounded buffers, idle-expiry mapping, and the chosen endpoint-addressing shape. Derisks OQ-TN-02 (and OQ-TN-07's option B).

   Done 2026-09-06 — see poc-summary.md. 17 tests pass; the producer/consumer shape validated end-to-end over alkcall 0.5.0 (establisher + two-pump + codec + typed establishment errors).

2. Reverse-flow POC — -R-style: the accept side listens, the far side carries. Derisks OQ-TN-03's advertisement/lifecycle shape. Template available: SSH's tcpip-forward global-request registration → per-accept forwarded-tcpip opens → cancel (ssh-socks5-survey.md §RFC 4254 §7.1).

   Done 2026-09-07 — see reverse-poc-summary.md. 14 tests pass over alkcall 0.6.0; the review 007 non-finding trace confirmed by execution (from_connection_with_serving + register_on + serving-side allocation). The advertisement thread of OQ-TN-03 closes: no advertisement op needed — the listener is the hub's own local resource; a far-side listener is a producer-side listen establisher over the same open op. Findings: F-1 (plan payloads must be Send + Sync — documented upstream in 0.7.0), F-2 (UDP raw pass-through cannot carry empty datagrams — the length-framed codec is mandatory, second validation of the codec decision). W1 (connect-side serving path resolves identity only via payload auth_token) filed for the alkcall ledger — RESOLVED by alkcall 0.7.0 (CF-005/CF-006); the POC re-validated over 0.7.0 (16 tests): transport identity authorizes alone, ServingConfig. identity overrides, identity-less fails closed, and the establisher sees the per-call opener identity.

3. Unix socket + stdio bridge POC — cheap; validates "substrate agnostic" beyond IP substrates.

4. Two-pump helper extraction spike — OQ-TN-06, only after 1–3.

POC placement conventions (2026-09-05): a POC that needs code from this repo runs in a worktree/branch (.worktrees/research/<task-id>/ per the SDD process); a POC that is self-contained runs as a standalone crate in the global workspace (the /workspace/alknet-channels-poc precedent) with its findings written into docs/research/ here. Both are valid; pick per the POC's dependency footprint. Findings always land in docs/research/ regardless of where the code lives.

Status: open — pick 1 (and probably 2) after the research pass; 3 is cheap enough to fold into whichever POC runs first.

Survey / prior-art list

Candidate reading for the research specialist (to be expanded):

• SSH channel/forwarding model: RFC 4254 §7 (direct-tcpip / forwarded-tcpip), OpenSSH -L/-R/-D semantics, russh's ChannelOpen framing (russh is already in /workspace/russh; confirmed 2026-09-05: no UDP channel support at all — no UDP prior art there, but useful for open-op framing intel).
• SOCKS5 (RFC 1928): addressing (ATYP), UDP ASSOCIATE framing, per-endpoint multiplexing — the closest standardized "arbitrary tunnel + UDP" model. Relevant to the -D composition path (OQ-TN-03 residue), not the base open-op params (OQ-TN-01 reframe).
• tun2proxy (/workspace/tun2proxy, src/udpgw.rs): UDP gateway over TCP — per-datagram length framing, SOCKS5 per-datagram addressing, CONN_ID flow multiplexing, keepalive/ERR flag packets, MTU cap, idle expiry. Analyzed in §Prior art. Its socks.rs / proxy_handler.rs are also relevant for the -D (dynamic/SOCKS) composition question (OQ-TN-03).
• quinn-proxy-poc (/workspace/quinn-proxy-poc) and iroh (/workspace/iroh): datagram-native transports; how they model per-endpoint flows.
• alknet docs: ADR-071 §ALPN table (alknet/tunnel row), ADR-078, docs/architecture/crates/channels/channel-operations.md (params for alknet/tunnel is "the target resource"), and the hub-relay interaction (ADR-042/079).
• alktty: NegotiateRequest shape (self-contained negotiation precedent), TtyBackend inversion point, TTY_OPEN_SCOPE access gate.
• ssh-socks5-survey.md (this directory, 2026-09-06): SSH channel-open/open-failure/forwarding model, SOCKS5 ATYP/CONNECT/ UDP ASSOCIATE, error-vocabulary comparison, endpoint-at-open vs per-datagram analysis, anti-prior-art list (what NOT to carry over). Feeds OQ-TN-01/02/07/09 statuses above.

Convergence checklist (what Phase 0 must produce)

• Survey notes: SSH/SOCKS5 addressing + UDP framing (OQ-TN-01, OQ-TN-02) — tun2proxy UDP gateway (§Prior art) + ssh-socks5-survey.md (SSH/SOCKS5, error vocabularies, endpoint-vs-per-datagram, anti-prior-art list)
• Reframe landed (OQ-TN-01) — params = self-contained JSON open-op object identifying a produced resource + substrate discriminator (tcp/udp/extensible); producer owns the backing; no URL-style general addressing. Residue: resource naming shape, exact JSON layout (Phase 1 ADR); discovery resolved (OQ-TN-08)
• Direction model resolved (OQ-TN-03) — hub-owns-the-connection model: role follows the resource, no protocol-level direction; -D composes at the assembly layer
• No-forced-binding requirement encoded (OQ-TN-04) — binding is always assembly-layer and optional; remaining work is the concrete produce/consume API surface sketch (spec task)
• Access control + discovery resolved (OQ-TN-08) — resource ownership assumed on the far side; alkcall's existing ACL applies as-is; ops listing (ADR-047) is tunnel-resource discovery; -D = "tunnel a socks5 connection" (target selection in the socks5 protocol, not params). Per-op metadata residue RESOLVED 2026-09-06: alkcall 0.5.0 review 006 E-02 lands OperationSpec.description (round-trips through discovery); the live resource-enumeration half (OQ-40) stays deferred and is not needed for v1
• Lifecycle/error resolved (OQ-TN-09) — superseded 2026-09-06 by alkcall ADR-049 (0.5.0): establishment is the open op's awaited phase (register_openable_with_establisher); dial failure is a typed channel:open_failed call error (reason ∈ dial_failed / unknown_resource / resource_shortage / handler_error / timeout), never a phantom channel. Residual for Phase 1: half-open semantics only; v1 needs no mid-stream control frame
• Codec direction set (from the alktty pattern prior art) — raw pass-through for stream substrates (0 B tunnel overhead), [len:u16 BE] per datagram for UDP (2 B); no 5-byte header (a tunnel has one data stream per direction — no sub-demux key needed). Residual for the Phase 1 ADR: empty-datagram (len=0) semantics — strengthened 2026-09-07 (F-2): the codec is mandatory for UDP (empty datagram = zero-byte read = EOF collision in raw pass-through); the empty-datagram semantic under the codec is len=0 = a legal empty datagram (forward POC validated). Feeds OQ-TN-07 (option A strengthened: substrate discriminator in params selects the framing) and the OQ-TN-05 trait shape
• Decision input: backend trait vs no-trait (OQ-TN-05), now including the hub re-produce composition question
• Targeted POC(s) run + summary (OQ-TN-10) — UDP POC DONE (2026-09-06, poc-summary.md); reverse-flow POC DONE (2026-09-07, reverse-poc-summary.md — the -R shape validated end-to-end over alkcall 0.6.0, re-validated over 0.7.0 with the CF-005/CF-006 identity remediation; findings F-1/F-2; W1 filed upstream and RESOLVED). Remaining items resolved in Phase 1: #3 split — unix ships with the local feature (OQ-TN-14); stdio is OUT (alktty's pipe mode owns process stdio — exit codes + signals are tty semantics); #4 resolved by alkcall 0.6.0 (ADR-050)
• Two-pump helper convergence input gathered (OQ-TN-06) — the POC gives both shapes (producer pump_halves, consumer take_halves + copy): same shape modulo channel side; the alknet ADR-078 convergence test is satisfied, extraction now decidable in Phase 1. RESOLVED 2026-09-07: the helper landed upstream in alkcall 0.6.0 as channels::pump_bidi (ADR-050, review 007 R-03) — this crate consumes it; see OQ-TN-06
• OQ-TN-05 executable input (backend trait vs no-trait) — POC confirms stream substrates need no trait: pump_halves is generic over boxed halves (TCP into_split, UDP UdpHalf adapter); "produce halves for a resource" is a function. The hub re-produce composition question is the only remaining OQ-TN-05 thread
• Open questions promoted to Phase 1 docs/architecture/open-questions.md with statuses