Bitcoin core peers low, why?

[calkob]

Hi i run a full node with port 8333 open,  some days i will have 90 peers connected and other day it will be like 20, what makes the difference?  Also on start up does my node look for node it has been connected to before or just get random ones?  if its random how does it find another node?

thanks

[shorena]

Hi i run a full node with port 8333 open,  some days i will have 90 peers connected and other day it will be like 20, what makes the difference?  Also on start up does my node look for node it has been connected to before or just get random ones?  if its random how does it find another node?

thanks

It takes some time until you have a steady high number of nodes. My new node has been running almost a year now and it took some time until it was known enough among other nodes to be at capacitiy quickly after a reboot (see e.g. the recent updates). Your node keeps a file with known nodes and also asks them for more peers. Only at first it connects to so called 'seed nodes'.

[calkob]

Hi i run a full node with port 8333 open,  some days i will have 90 peers connected and other day it will be like 20, what makes the difference?  Also on start up does my node look for node it has been connected to before or just get random ones?  if its random how does it find another node?

thanks

It takes some time until you have a steady high number of nodes. My new node has been running almost a year now and it took some time until it was known enough among other nodes to be at capacitiy quickly after a reboot (see e.g. the recent updates). Your node keeps a file with known nodes and also asks them for more peers. Only at first it connects to so called 'seed nodes'.

Thanks shorena, what exactly is a seed node and how does this tie in with the decentralised nature of bitcoin,  if a brand new node has to contact a centralised node to start out then surly that is a problem.

[shorena]

Hi i run a full node with port 8333 open,  some days i will have 90 peers connected and other day it will be like 20, what makes the difference?  Also on start up does my node look for node it has been connected to before or just get random ones?  if its random how does it find another node?

thanks

It takes some time until you have a steady high number of nodes. My new node has been running almost a year now and it took some time until it was known enough among other nodes to be at capacitiy quickly after a reboot (see e.g. the recent updates). Your node keeps a file with known nodes and also asks them for more peers. Only at first it connects to so called 'seed nodes'.

Thanks shorena, what exactly is a seed node and how does this tie in with the decentralised nature of bitcoin,  if a brand new node has to contact a centralised node to start out then surly that is a problem.

More about them here[1] and here[2] and yes its a problem for new nodes even though there is not a single seed node, but several. You can attempt connections using the addnode and connect commands/config file options, but its probably rarely used to jump start a node list.

[1] https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-guide#peer-discovery
[2] https://github.com/sipa/bitcoin-seeder