Previous similar attempts were often not pragmatic or frugal enough. They cared about peer to peer purity more than about it working under all circumstances. They also frequently overabstracted things.

So we got into the sad situation that people associate peer to peer connectivity systems with having to frequently debug the entire stack and having recurrent performance or connectivity issues.

A part of the motivation for the iroh team is to change this notion by being very pragmatic and minimalistic. E.g. the use of relays vs. enlisting other peers to help with hole punching.