Bitcoin Forum

Last time I asked what I should do etc ... to make a node
well I opened ports as asked I guess and all should be fine now , some people told me to see to the Network Traffic but not sure how to know if I'am running a node as should be or not .
So here is a picture of my Network Traffic , let me know if all good please .

http://i.epvpimg.com/NEese.png


~ Madness

Maybe try to search your node here : https://getaddr.bitnodes.io

Well its running. If you click on "peers" in the same window you can see to how many peers you are connected to and details about the connection. If you opened the ports properly there should be more than 8 connections. You can also check this under the "Information" tab.

@Redsn0w here is what I'am getting (that green thing) sorry because I'am hiding my IP but I like to remain annonymus .

http://i.epvpimg.com/osLig.png


@shorena I'am getting 28 Peers on the peers tab , also there is 28 Connections to Bitcoin Network and sometimes 29 .

~ Madness

Green = good. They offer more info about your node via (change IP accordingly):
https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/nodes/213.165.91.169-8333


Well done. Node is reachable from the outside. If you have a static IP all you need to do now is keep the machine powered and online.

Awesome , I guess I'am doing it right then ;D Thank you so much .
It's really nice to know that I'am the only one running a node on my country .

~ Madness

I left the Bitcoin COre client running all the night , when I woke up and checked on that website again , it gives me in Red the following message : " xx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8333 is unreachable." (xx represent my IP of course)

~ Madness

Does the network data window still show traffic to/from your bitcoin node? Did your ISP change your IP address overnight? (This can happen if you have small disconnects). Do you have any data transfer caps with your ISP?

Oh , then this might be the reason indeed . I always have small disconnects sometimes yes .
What I do now ? Close & re open the wallet and all should be fine and running again ?
 
~ Madness

How many peers on the peers tab?

They became 8 peers now , and yesterday they were 28-29 peers .

~ MAdness

Check what your IP address is http://www.whatismyip.com/ if it has changed then put that into the bitnode website and see if its up.

Well that won't work , it's the same IP . Since WhatisMyIP reads my IP adress , and the Bitnode website do the same thing (read my IP) and it's me who have to write it down . so both IP's match
What else I could do please ? :(
~ Madness

Check your settings regarding the port in the router, firewall etc. again. I had a router before that would "forget" settings when there was a power cycle.

Another option could be your ISP started blocking it? You'd have to ask them.

My ISP don't care about anything and don't block anything to be honest . they simply don't give a single shit . (that's why I love my country)
I checked again and I'am getting it green again .. I guess it was unstable or something when my modem turned off for sometime and turned on once again .. so it took time
Thanks for all your help :) works fine now .

~ Madness

how much upstream do you have?  might want to consider using netlimiter

I have no idea what you mean to be honest .
But the node seems to work fine with that node checker website .

~ Madness

He means your upload capacity. There have been cases in the past where Bitcoin Core used all of the upload capacity of the users' Internet connection. To the point of making browsing etc. impossible.

Netlimiter is a software for Windows that allows you to limit programs to certain speeds.

Oh i didnt knew that , thanks mate
But no all good , i can play online games and browse just fine without issues

Wait til someone on a vps or dedicated server tries to grab the blockchain from you.  =p

Well, you may be OK if you have 10Mbps + upstream.  Not so with me at 768kbps.  Netlimiter is cool to have, anyway.  So much better than using QoS on router ..

What :o they can do that ? I mean downloading the blockchain from me ? :o
So that's where the blockchain comes from ? I thought it's downloading it from a link or something on the first place :o
pretty interessting information to be honest
~ Madness

Remember that it is a peer-to-peer (P2P) crypto currency , so every node communicate with all the network. Like the old Emule or uTorrent but here the file is the blockchain ledger (with all the bitcoin transaction).

Hm I see , it does make sense I guess
But let's say someone is running the Bitcoin Core for first time so he need to download the blockchain , how the Bitcoin Core will choose from where to download the blockchain ? Randomly ? or same country etc ... ?

~ Madness

I can't give you a secure answer but I think that the node is chosen randomly (but I'm not sure).

So that's basically means that if you shutdown your wallet and run it again , you will start downloading from another node and not from node that you started downloading from it on the first place , correct ? :o

~ Madness

No, if you run the latest version it will download from all available peers (after it has the headers).  https://bitcoin.org/en/release/v0.10.0

Which node you download from don't matter much anymore. The speed issue is a thing of the past, thanks to the headers first solution.

As such I also expect that the QoS / Netlimiter issues are a thing of the past (unless somebody connects to your node only on purpose of course).

For the very first time there is a discovery from DNS seeds. All discovered peers are put in a file. On future starts it will try to connect to those peers again, unless that file was deleted and it will look for the DNS seed again.

I see :o Well thanks a lot Newar , you was very helpful to me
Really appreciate it . thanks

~ Madness

Oh thanks for the information, I didn't know these things. So only with the latest version of bitcoin core? And what about for the previous versions?

Really glad to see so many people starting to run nodes in so many different places.  We sure need them!

Yes, only the latest one. Read the changelog page I linked to (above). Previous versions would connect to peers, but only one of them would be the "sync" node - the node your node would get the blockchain from. This could suck if that node was on a very slow line. So to know some quick ones @shorena came up with that nice list (there are other lists too, i.e. on the wiki, but the speed is not posted on those).

Bitcoin Core 0.10.0 is already a quarter of the nodes known to bitnodes.io, so this "sync node" issue very much likely a thing of the past.

Yeah , and I'am actually the only one who is running one on my country , at least this is what that website says ;D (I run more then one)

~ Madness

Interesting, every day I learn a new thing about bitcoin. Thanks again Newar , I think this feature is very important and maybe in these days I will "create" a new node.

Congrats on your node, Madness.  I just started running a node, too.  It's fun to be part of the network and contributing to Bitcoin.

Here's a bit of basic reading on peer2peer for you, I'm surprised you weren't at least familiar with the concept prior to starting this thread: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

Thanks mate , really appreciate it .
Well I know "the basics" on what Peer to peer means but nothing too complicated . ty again

~ Madness

Most websites aren't 100% accurate since some nodes may already have hit their max connection and is unable to connect to more.

Also, sync is dependant not only on internet but also on I/O speed and CPU speed.

I know that , but pretty sure that I'am the only one or one of the few (because I never seen others by mine) .
On my country people don't know what Bitcoin is , even if there is who knows they don't know how to use it . People don't even know or use Credit cards , they believe in CASH only  ::) No it's not another poor africain country , our country is too rich and have oil but idk .. no technology or open minded people .
~ Madness

interesting, I think I'll put that to the test later, re: connecting to default 8 nodes and see if I receive blocks fast enough.  it'd still be slower obv if I couldn't get at least 6Mbps from all those connections, since that's about what I max out at when I synced with my server (was around blocks 150,000-250,000..  before and after that it was slower)

Please report back with an update, would like to know how it goes.

Sometimes this happens to my node too, I've several days downloading the blockchain using latest version and after doing a bitcoin-cli getinfo i can see that its working so i leave it alone, ill suppose that when it gets the whole blockchain this should pass and always give a green signal on getaddrs

Don't particularly want to do it on my home computer, but I'm getting a new dedi within the next week or so, so I'll test it on that.  Normally it takes about 2-3 hrs on an i7-4770 (connected to one IP)