bitcoin wallet has 56 connections and uses nearly 1mbps

[pandemic]

Strange issue. I've got a small server on a relatively slow connection. I run it as a node on the bitcoin network. Normally my wallet connects to about 8 connections maximum. The server I've got running (with UPnP enabled) has 56 connections and was using a steady 900kbps. The upload on this connection is 800kbps and download is 1mbps. Needless to say the bitcoin wallet is nearly using the entire amount of bandwidth on the network.

I've never had more than 13 connections before. I'm not sure how I can limit the bitcoin wallet.

Any suggestions?

[1715251409]

1715251409

[1715251409]

1715251409

[TangibleCryptography]

Add this to the bitcoin.conf

# Maximum number of inbound+outbound connections.
maxconnections=20

You probably got a spike of new users (bootstraping the blockchain) because the sustained network traffic is nowhere need 900kbps.

[pandemic]

is the bitcoin.conf something I need to create or can it be found somewhere in the /program files/bitcoin folder?

[grue]

is the bitcoin.conf something I need to create or can it be found somewhere in the /program files/bitcoin folder?

create it in:
%appdata%\bitcoin\
yes, it's a folder.

[pandemic]

other than

# Maximum number of inbound+outbound connections.
maxconnections=20

what else should I have in the bitcoin.conf file?

[TangibleCryptography]

You don't "need" anything.  The config file simply overrides default behavior.  Like in this case you want to limit the number of connections.  If you want to see what is possible ...

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin#Bitcoin.conf_Configuration_File

[pandemic]

I put in the changes and it's been working well. I noticed it's at 8 connections but it did spike for a while earlier tonight at nearly 1mbps. Is there any way to limit the max bandwidth that goes to the wallet?

[deepceleron]

You are getting more than 8 connections because Bitcoin now supports uPnP, communicating with your router and automatically configuring port forwarding, so you are able to make a full network connection, also allowing inbound traffic.

Just as you had to download 5GB of blockchain from other peer-to-peer nodes in order to use Bitcoin, Bitcoin is now sharing your copy of the blockchain and relaying transactions to others.

Bitcoin has no native rate limiting, although here is a thread discussing third-party solutions:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100779.0