Alcuin 9997 now uses a gossip protocol to send messages between network nodes. Additionally, the config file has been restructured to allow for using a separate local secret for each peer. Packet sizes have been significantly reduced through usage of the struct.pack/unpack functions to directly write bytes to the packet. Thanks to PeterL for a snippet I used to detect duplicate timestamps.
I don't foresee making any further major releases until asciilifeform publishes his standard.