Feature Request: Much more information in network/peers REST API

[bcbrock]

Description

This is a feature request; I don't expect it to be considered immediately because it is probably a major change.

I would like the REST API /network/peers to return much more information about each peer. This can help with testing, and perhaps with real deployments as well. Basically, I want to know everything known about the peers that is not considered confidential:

• Host and port addresses of all ports: REST, gRPC, events, CLI, profiling
• Consensus mode of the network
• Security settings
• Peer operating system + peer resources
• Peer chaincode deployment methodology
• Peer physical location (if known)
• May as well throw in the peer's block height too
• Last known information about peers that appear to be disconnected

Maybe this is already part of the SDK? Or another way to get this? For example, none of the documented APIs return the consensus mode as far as I can tell.

[christo4ferris]

I think we should spend some time designing the API at some point. How is it used? For what purpose, etc. While this may be the right approach, it might also be somewhat expensive once we start deploying networks at scale. If we were to really use REST (ahem) correctly, we would include links to explore information further (eg. we enumerate peers with some basic information, and include a link to retrieve the complete set of information about the peer. Alternately, you could pass some variable that indicated you want a full dump vs just a list with minimal info.