There ought to be a way to download the block chain over LAN

[bitcredit]

Many BitTorrent clients now search the LAN for peers and download rapidly from them if they're seeding.

Waiting for the whole block chain to be downloaded while you've got another computer with it up to date is aggravating. Now, I suppose I could copy some files, but I'm not sure which ones to copy and frankly I shouldn't have to. Ideally, Bitcoin should use the same technology that BitTorrent clients now use to find local peers. That being said, I'd happy being able to give the client a local IP and have it copy over the first 100,000 or so blocks quickly.

[1714182679]

1714182679

[1714182679]

1714182679

[1714182679]

1714182679

[1714182679]

1714182679

[Stephen Gornick]

I'd happy being able to give the client a local IP and have it copy over the first 100,000 or so blocks quickly.

You can tell the client to connect only to the ip address of another client on your LAN:
  see: -connect=n.n.n.n
  http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin

I don't know how much faster blocks are downloaded though -- the amount of time isn't necessarily spent entirely on transferring.

If you have a new wallet (no transactions yet), you can download the blockchain files:
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/

Because your client relies on the integrity of the blockchain when processing blocks, you don't want to just use a torrented copy.

Down the road, on the roadmap to Bitcoin 1.0 is a lightweight client that stores "headers only" so the time for a new installation to get to "ready" state will be shorter at some point.

[PPCMac]

If you have a new wallet (no transactions yet), you can download the blockchain files:
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/blockchain/

Or you can use the dayly snapshot from here: http://81.169.129.25/blockchain/
which is compressed better and more up to date.

[Sukrim]

Because your client relies on the integrity of the blockchain when processing blocks, you don't want to just use a torrented copy.

BitTorrent does heavy checksumming - if you'd offer a weekly updated "official torrent" (and maybe even download this torrent via the client if it's new!) this would NOT compromise any integrity imho.

Any node I download blocks from could send me bogus data instead as well...