Bitcoin Core Full Node and Port Forwarding

[ndgo]

Hello,
I decided to cancel my search for Satoshi and move on to more important things like practicing proper bitcoin etiquette.

That means I'm doing the Initial Block Download for my Satoshi 22.0 node. Thank you to the massive numbers of seeders who sent me anywhere from 1kb to 24gb of the blockchain.

Anyway, I realized that I'm not going to be a very useful full node because I do not have the ability to port forward at my new apartment.
If anyone knows a backend way to port forward or whether VPN services that allow port forwarding would work let me know. This would also be helpful for my bittorrent seeding which hasn't been working since I moved houses.

Thanks bitcoiners!

[jackg]

Anyway, I realized that I'm not going to be a very useful full node because I do not have the ability to port forward at my new apartment.
If anyone knows a backend way to port forward or whether VPN services that allow port forwarding would work let me know. This would also be helpful for my bittorrent seeding which hasn't been working since I moved houses.

Quick fix for those: have you thought about routing them through tor?

It's normally recommended not to do the initial download over tor (because of its size - even if it is a slow download) but you'd still be able to connect to others and send blocks out/broadcast your own transactions.

I'm guessing you have no control over routers and such where you are too so I doubt vpns will work that well or at all (depending on how strong their firewall is).

[vv181]

Hey, I suggest you read Just finished downloading the entire blockchain. How can I help the network now? thread. There is an explanation even if you didn't open up your 8333 port, you are still being a useful node.

I also listed a reference about how to open the portfoward the port there. If you still somehow couldn't port forwarding it, I suggest you run the node over Tor, since it will automatically opened up your ports, and you will get better privacy, as @jackg suggest.

Regarding VPN, AFAIK, Bitcoin node would not prioritize non-default ports--since if you use VPN, you will have a different port for the remote port forwarding, so, I don't know for sure it will be helpful or not, I personally, haven't tried it out myself.