Bitcoin Forum

Hi!

300... Thats the number of nodes said to be active right now on BlockChain.info... Are these the computers that support the entire BitCoin network? Is that what a node is?

If so, then I'm a little surprised... Thought there would be more, like tens of thousands maybe!  :o

That's the number of nodes blockchain.info is directly connected to.

EDIT:

Check out: http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk/ (it shows a number slightly less than 20K)

Also, it's not possible to get a reliable node count for the Bitcoin network, these are only estimations. Plus, node count doesn't tell much about the number of active users, since a lot of people don't run their own nodes.

OK! Some sort of 'first circle' then... Wow, I was a little worried for a moment there!  ;D

Well 'first circle' would imply blockchain.info is at the center.

blockchain.info node is simply a peer among peers.

Many nodes for security reasons don't accept incoming connections and connect only to peers they trust so even if blockchain.info tried to connect to every node it simply couldn't.

20000... Much much better! 8)

Even if the count is not precise, this shows that the network is really robust!

Thanks for the link!

That node count on the homepage is wrong.

If you look at the total relayed count on inventory information e.g. (http://blockchain.info/inv/00000000000009aaf32be97019bfde76bcc3c79fe5e40ca4f7fc7bac6a5883cd) you'll see the site is connected to about 3k - 4k nodes (which fits nicely with rowits estimation of around ~4k listening hosts).

I meant BlockChain.info's own personal first circle...  :)

As long as it's not 300, I'm happy!  8)

Why is the node count on a steady decrease?

online wallet services

I think Electrum's getting more use, too. The blockchain's getting ridiculous in size. It takes way too much time where the hard drive is practically unusable. It's almost to the point where you can't just go to sleep after starting the client and expect everything to be ready to go when you wake up. With SatoshiDICE adding 100MB every month or so, I don't think there will be many "full" clients by the time the block reward halves, unless a solution's implemented.

THIS IS BITCOIN!

Is there any software to support the bitcoin network without hogging the HDD? I have some spare bandwidth on my server, but running just some client seems to be useless.

I think if Bitcoin wants to keep it's decentralized resilience we need ^ ASAP. The node count and the blockchain size are both the only two things that worry me when it comes to Bitcoin's future.

The newer versions are much better.  From a clean install it takes about 2 hours.  So a daily or weekly update should take a tiny fraction of that.  Still there is a lot more room for improvement.  I mean 1.3 GB isn't that large.  I don't see why the coldboot time couldn't be reduced to <15 minutes per GB.

I can tell you why one of them fell out.

Firstly, I did not feel that there is enough consideration and effort going into optimization required to realistically operate nodes in 'lower echelon' environments.  The bulk of the effort I detected was directed toward denying that there is a potential issue looming.

Secondly it's a bitch to compile bitcoind on anything but the one 'true' platform.  I've got to futz with this every time I wish to upgrade.  (I've not checked to see if anyone has developed a functional auto-configuration system yet...but I doubt it.)

Thirdly, and most importantly, I've got other interests and responsibilities.

Next time I run a node it will probably be on a dedicated micro instance in AWS or some similar platform.  That probably won't be until I have the time and inclination to actually do something positive toward support of the project rather than just whine.