you can imagine sending out a REQ into some gossip overlay network, if there is some node willing to service that request it could initiate a negentropy sync with you.

The ideal scenario is:

1. send to immediate subnet to see if there are any other devices on my network who can service it

2. send it into some wider local area network

3. reach out to gossip on the internet

4. reach out to oribtal relays to see there is anything cached off planet..

5. reach out to the mars relay to se... ok getting silly but still

Maybe ICN can even help is here somehow if that ever gets implemented.

One thing that comes to mind is having TTL on the packet to limit the reach of each tier of request.

Let's say you send out N REQ packets, each with different TTL. Then at the router where the packet is about to expire, the router can see if there are any nearby nostr nodes to service the request.

All this would require is new kind of IP protocol outside of the regular ones (TCP, UDP, etc) so maybe this is a bit far off for now 😂