Atsign Platform Overview

An overview of Atsign's core pillars of technology

Overview

Atsign Platform allows people, entities and things to communicate privately and securely without having to know about the intricacies of the underlying IP network. The Atsign Protocol is the application protocol used to communicate, and Atsigns are the addresses on the protocol. All cryptographic keys are cut at the edge by the Atsign owner, meaning only the receiving and sending Atsigns see data in the clear.

Atsign Platform can be used to send data synchronously or asynchronously, and can be used as a data plane, or a control plane, or both, simultaneously at Internet scale.

Atsign Platform composition (dark mode)

Atsign Platform composition (light mode)

Relationships

Every atServer is associated with one Atsign, and each atServer stores many atRecords.

When provided an Atsign, the atDirectory returns a DNS address and port number for its atServer.

The Atsign Protocol is the application layer protocol used to communicate with an atServer.

Core Components

The Atsign Platform consists of multiple components that work together:

Atsign

The identity for people, entities, and things.

Atsign

atDirectory

Address book for Atsigns (like DNS)

atDirectory

atServer

An Atsign's personal data service for sync/async communications

atServer

SDKs

Toolkits to help developers build applications on the platform

SDKs

Atsign Protocol

Layer 7 protocol that connects everything together

Atsign Protocol