Bitcoin Forum

Other => Beginners & Help => Topic started by: Braincoin on October 14, 2012, 08:23:37 PM



Title: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: Braincoin on October 14, 2012, 08:23:37 PM
Just synched my bitcoin client to the network. It took 22+ hours. How long did it take for you?


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: kokjo on October 14, 2012, 08:40:54 PM
congratulations! to download the complete blockchain or blocks that was mined over night?


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: underminer on October 14, 2012, 08:42:40 PM
One thing you can do is copy the contents if the appdata folder and put them into your new appdata folder *if* you will be doing it again anytime soon on another machine.  (Or if you decide to format yours...)


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: Arto on October 14, 2012, 09:07:33 PM
I think it took about 7-8 hours for me the last time around.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: Braincoin on October 15, 2012, 12:25:43 AM
congratulations! to download the complete blockchain or blocks that was mined over night?

Thanks! I believe it was most or all of the blockchain. I haven't synced fully in about a year. Originally it only took about 5 hours (last year).

Quote
One thing you can do is copy the contents if the appdata folder and put them into your new appdata folder *if* you will be doing it again anytime soon on another machine.  (Or if you decide to format yours...)

Hmmm, not sure what that means or what that would do, but thanks for the tip. I'm on a Mac.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: underminer on October 15, 2012, 12:40:33 AM
It'll greatly reduce the download time is all.  I hate the waiting.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: AmDD on October 15, 2012, 12:54:12 AM
Took 12 or more hours (I stopped watching it after 12 hrs) on a 50mb Internet connection a few weeks ago. I can just imagine what it will be like in a year or two...


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: kokjo on October 15, 2012, 06:49:48 AM
congratulations! to download the complete blockchain or blocks that was mined over night?

Thanks! I believe it was most or all of the blockchain. I haven't synced fully in about a year. Originally it only took about 5 hours (last year).
which version of the client are you using?
it takes only like 4-5 hours to download the whole chain, with a new version of bitcoin.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: Braincoin on October 16, 2012, 03:48:50 AM
which version of the client are you using?
it takes only like 4-5 hours to download the whole chain, with a new version of bitcoin.

I'm using version 0.5.0.1-beta on a Mac. I just saw 0.7.0 is available. I hadn't even thought about that. Thanks. Does this mean I will have to download the entire block chain again? I hope not. :)


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: mesquka on October 16, 2012, 11:49:37 AM
-


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: BitcoinOxygen on October 16, 2012, 12:38:51 PM
it took 2 day's for me to download the blockchain on a 25MB fiber connection's

but anyway you will only download the blockchain once..


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: btcfaucet on October 16, 2012, 07:09:39 PM
2 day's

:)


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: C10H15N on October 16, 2012, 07:20:35 PM
Not real sure.  Only did it once and I let it run over night (10Mb).  It was finished when I came in the next morning.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: dangelus on October 16, 2012, 08:24:24 PM
Took around 18 hours, but that was on a dire connection on a dire computer.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: panda1 on October 16, 2012, 08:32:35 PM
It took me around 30 hours on cable modem.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: jking on October 18, 2012, 03:19:12 AM
I'm 30 minutes in.

So why does the client synchronize with the network in the first place?

I found this:

"The popular bitcoin client software from bitcoin.org implements a "full" bitcoin node: It can carry out all the duties of the bitcoin P2P system, it isn't simply a "client". One of the principles behind the operation of full bitcoin nodes is that they don't trust that the other participants have followed the rules of the bitcoin system. During synchronization the software is processing historical bitcoin transactions and making sure for itself that all of the rules of the system have been correctly followed."

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ

Does that mean that if I used a client that wasn't using "full" bitcoin node, I might somehow get a wrong version of the blockchain? Is synchronization to protect me or to protect the system?



Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: Xch4ng3 on October 18, 2012, 06:27:33 AM
The first time was about 8 hours all together. This was almost two years ago though, haven't had to do a full synch in a while.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: Haihai on October 18, 2012, 01:34:49 PM
Last time for me was something like 10 hours.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: Gabi on October 18, 2012, 01:39:15 PM
More or less 22 hours is normal today, unless you do this https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=117982.0 wich mean in a hour or so you are ok.
And i heard about a new database system with future bitcoin client wich will make the downloading blocks thing much faster (in case you didn't notice, it took 22 hours because the hard disk was trashing like mad to verify every block, a better database would allow the computer to do that much much quicker!)

Oh or you can use a lightweight client like Electrum or Armory  :)


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: Arto on October 18, 2012, 02:39:11 PM
And i heard about a new database system with future bitcoin client wich will make the downloading blocks thing much faster (in case you didn't notice, it took 22 hours because the hard disk was trashing like mad to verify every block, a better database would allow the computer to do that much much quicker!)

Yes, that's indeed upcoming. Here's what one of the core developers said recently:

I've also spent more than a few weeks time already on rewriting the reference client's validation engine to be much more efficient. Without any compensation, by the way. I understand the decreasing performance is rapidly becoming an issue, and not seeing improvement must be frustrating. But please don't think we're ignorant. I'm not alone, of course. Mike helped by making Bitcoin run on top of LevelDB (instead of ancient BDB), which has much better performance, in particular on slow disks.

All this is finished and works. It just requires a massive amount of testing - we can't just switch to some faster code and hope that it behaves the same way. Even if it deviates from the old one in the tiniest way, we have a serious problem. This will take time to merge, and time is critical now. We're also just volunteers.

Anyway, expect 0.8 to be significantly faster than 0.7. I'm not talking about a few percent improvement. How much improvement will depend on a lot of factors, but I've done test runs (in idealized conditions) with full syncs in less than half an hour. In practice for most it will probably still be hours, but it shouldn't be days anymore.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: Gabi on October 18, 2012, 06:38:17 PM
Awesome!


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: osmosisjoe on October 19, 2012, 02:08:30 AM
usually takes me about 3 days.

The first 50% happens in a few hours, then the last 90% goes on forever. Really can't wait for this to be optimized.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: tha_snazzle on October 19, 2012, 02:53:37 AM
Been going all day now, hopefully it'll be done by tomorrow morning.


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: 1BTCbargains on October 19, 2012, 03:43:11 AM
Use electrum and never wait again to download blocks to your PC. :)


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: nick0016 on October 19, 2012, 05:42:24 AM
Took me around 6 hours. I use online wallket like electrum, much easier and faster!


Title: Re: Synchronizing with network - how long for you?
Post by: techmix on October 19, 2012, 07:51:18 AM
It usually takes 3 or 4 days to completely sync ;D