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Title: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: joeyjoe on November 02, 2011, 07:46:55 PM Bitcoin gets its nodes from IP's connected on the IRC irc.lfnet.org...
so what would happen if the IRC were to go down? Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: wareen on November 02, 2011, 07:58:29 PM A question for the experts at the Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1292/bitcoin-client-irc-a-potential-network-weak-link (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1292/bitcoin-client-irc-a-potential-network-weak-link) Short answer: it won't be a big problem, since IRC is only one way for the client to find peers. Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: DeathAndTaxes on November 02, 2011, 08:07:23 PM Nothing as the link above me shows the client has multiple methods to find peers and more methods could be added to future versions of the client.
H IRC is a "quick and dirty" way to bootstrap the network (get it up and running fast) but there is no reason to continue to use it. It opens up some potential vulnerabilities and there are other methods of finding peers. Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: joeyjoe on November 02, 2011, 10:43:58 PM no idea why this was moved to newbies...
Ok so theres multiple methods... is there a way that a user could flood IRC and cause all the bitcoin clients to hang or worse? Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: MyZhre on November 03, 2011, 10:02:23 AM There are other 8 ways, from the src code
Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: finway on November 03, 2011, 01:09:01 PM I've asked the same question, don't worry.
Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: MoonShadow on November 03, 2011, 08:54:08 PM is there a way that a user could flood IRC and cause all the bitcoin clients to hang or worse? All? No. Some, maybe. I don't use IRC at all, personally. It's not necessary anymore, even for a fresh install. Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: trilby on November 04, 2011, 06:52:30 PM I dont use the IRC the other methods are still just as reliable.
Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: dark_science on November 04, 2011, 08:47:49 PM I didn't know bitcoin was based on irc, is it strong enough to survive without it?
Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: MoonShadow on November 04, 2011, 08:57:16 PM I didn't know bitcoin was based on irc, is it strong enough to survive without it? Bitcoin is not based upon irc, but there is a channel dedicated to announcing peer addresses so that a new client install can find peers in the network quickly and 'bootstrap' itself. However, the current client uses several parrallel methods of doing this, so that it's not dependent upon the irc channel. Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: rjk on November 06, 2011, 12:23:08 AM I know that in addition to IRC, it uses DNS. Are there any other main methods used (besides IRC and DNS)?
Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: MoonShadow on November 06, 2011, 03:55:17 AM There is an internal fallback list, as well as a history list after the first connection. Connected peers can also share the addresses of peers that it is aware of as well.
Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: Nyaaan on November 06, 2011, 09:38:14 AM If IRC went down right now, would it negatively impact the Bitcoin economy and reduce prices?
Title: Re: What would happen if the IRC went down? Post by: kdomanski on November 06, 2011, 10:18:42 AM If IRC went down right now, would it negatively impact the Bitcoin economy and reduce prices? No. At the very most it could induce some connectivity problems, which isn't very likely, given that IRC is just one of many mechanisms for peer discovery. |