bitcoin-qt and bandwidth

[deepskydiver]

The current and previous client are causing me a lot of trouble unfortunately.

The 7Gb blockchain needed to be all but re-done after not using the client for a year or more. It's taken 4 days - and I've downloaded much more than 7Gb plainly.

It seems firstly that you act as a node (I don't know if this can be changed) - but there are some messy aspects to it.

First - it destroys my connection. It saturates the upload channel (a little over 1Mbps). Nothing else works - I can't possibly leave it running ever - is this intentional?
Second, it isn't easily throttled. It uses both its own process bitcoin-qt AND 'system' - though this appearance of it being under 'system' may be a limitation of the utility I'm using (Netbalancer).

The questions I have are:

1. Do you have to act as a node?
2. Will future clients be such bandwidth hogs and so slow?
3. Why is there nowhere to download the blockchain (the only source I could find was ancient!)

I suspect it's a real problem, because I want to do my part, but I can't leave the current client running.

[mitty]

The easiest way to avoid running the full client is to use an online wallet.  The easiest I've found is Blockchain.info: https://blockchain.info/wallet/

The only downside is that someone else (blockchain.info in this case) has control of your private keys and therefore your bitcoins.  Apparently they use client-side encryption but I remember one case where a dispute came up and blockchain took coins from an alleged scammer's wallet.  Just a consideration before giving someone else control over your coins.

I've also heard of people mentioning desktop clients that don't require a full blockchain download.  I don't know anything about these yet though. 

[deepskydiver]

Thanks - I've recently signed for an online wallet. So these client issues are common?

[Gabi]

4 days to get the blockchain? I suppose you are not using the bitcoin client version 0.8.1, am i right?

Also, there is a way to throttle it and tell it to not use more than some bandwidth, but i dunno how 

About lightweight clients, try Multibit or Electrum

[deepskydiver]

It was with 0.8.1 - I was amazed and annoyed by both how slow it was and how much it sucked
bandwidth. I'll have a look to see if you can throttle / limit it directly.

[Fressac]

It does take some time.

It took me about 20 hours running Bitcoin-Qt 0.8.0 on OS X. My bandwidth usage was pretty moderate though at only a couple hundred Kbps maximum and even then only at times.  Seems this is one of the more moderate cases compared to deepskydiver and others I've heard from who've gone through the process.

[deepskydiver]

OK, I've tried the command line parameters -listen=0 maxconnections=16
Seems to be much better in not sucking up the upload channel. I can't really assess the efficiency of download though it seemed perhaps better from the small number of blocks I needed to get.

[pharmland]

Online wallet is more risky because easier for someone to steal your BTC.

[oroqen]

I was in a similar boat, my DSL works but it's not the best, i used netlimiter to restrict it as not too kill my ping times, most net apps are happy with 80% of your net speed

[lindonclark86]

It took me quite a while to download too. Now I have a qt wallet for most of my bitcoins and an online blockchain wallet for portability.

[bovcan]

Yes I may switch to an online wallet because bitcoin-qt is such a hard disk space hog.  I wouldnt' risk too  muchy $ that way but maybe a little.

[Gabi]

Then use Multibit

[joesmoe2012]

I use blockchain.info, seems to be secure enough.

[BitcoinLeader]

I am having the same problem with bitcoind. I have downloaded bootstrap.dat (4.5gb) though, however it still takes more than 10 hours to update the whole blockchain.

Why can't  we just import the whole blockchain from a single archive?

[easycoins]

Thanks for the info!