A Uniform Resource Identifier (or URI) is a string of characters that identifies a resource over the network. The character string can be organized in a logical format (such as an object name) or a system-generated set of characters organized in a random pattern (such as a UUID):

The object's name or UUID must be known to identify the object to any storage cluster holding at least one replica of the object.

Address the cluster and specify a protocol delivering the data to retrieve an object over a network. A URI as defined in RFC 2396 allows specifying these components in a compact form:

• Protocol (http)

• Cluster name (companyname.example.com)

• Object name or UUID (12BFEA648C2697A56FD5618CAE15D5CA)

Supported Application Protocols

Swarm only understands the application-level protocol called SCSP, which is a subset of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1)  used by web servers and browsers. While additional access protocols may be added to Swarm in the future, HTTP is the only protocol supported direct to Swarm at this time.

For how to access Swarm via S3, see S3 Protocol Interface.

Addressing a Cluster

Address a storage cluster using either:

• The DNS name

• The IP address of a cluster node

Which node selected is not important, as long as the node is accessible to the application on the network. The node named in the URI is not required to be the same node that initially stored the object because any node can be asked to retrieve any object stored on any node in the cluster.