Does adding nodes in Bitcoin core increase its speed?

[btccrusher]

I'm using Bitcoin core 0.16.0 and it's syncing. It's a lengthy process to complete the synchronized process. My current progress speed is 0.22% per hour. It has 8 connections. It will take three more weeks to be done.
Now, I want to know, if I add nodes then will it increas its speed? If yes, could you please provide me the node list. 

Thank you.

[Jet Cash]

Have a look at your network traffic histogram. That should tell you if you re waiting on connections, and the transfer speed from your connections. If you have gaps in your histogram, then it could be your network provider capping your transfers, or it could be that you have a slowdown in your HDD for some reason. Have you tried adding some peers to see if it makes a difference?

[BillyBobZorton]

From what I've read, gaps in network activity are due poor performance somewhere on the user's computer. Probably the software downloads a chunk of the blockchain and as it downloads it has to validate, so it takes a while to validate and it stops downloading until the validation is complete... im not sure if this is the way it works, but me personally, I got it to download smoother once I update my HDD to SSD and got a better CPU. I tried a bunch of stuff and I was never able to get a smooth download with no big gaps on my older computer, and I had a decent connectivity of 8 peers on average at all times.

[Jet Cash]

I'm starting to think that my problem is in the Windows firewall on this computer. I need to do a bit more research, but I've got distracted by investigating Steemit, and playing with some video and audio files.

[btccrusher]

From what I've read, gaps in network activity are due poor performance somewhere on the user's computer. Probably the software downloads a chunk of the blockchain and as it downloads it has to validate, so it takes a while to validate and it stops downloading until the validation is complete... im not sure if this is the way it works, but me personally, I got it to download smoother once I update my HDD to SSD and got a better CPU. I tried a bunch of stuff and I was never able to get a smooth download with no big gaps on my older computer, and I had a decent connectivity of 8 peers on average at all times.

Thank you for your kind advice. I'll try updating my HDD. I have 4 GB ram, I'll update it too. Soon, I'll report it back whether it worked or not.

[Sr.Urbanist]

It takes forever to download ...

[Reset779]

Wow, with 0.22% every hour... I can see this as being a huge barrier to BTC adoption by normal people.

It's probably why people resort to using hardware wallets, like Trezor, or online web wallets.

But, I guess in the same token... if Bitcoin is to be used as a banking alternative, with utmost security... then it only makes sense that high tech specs are required by someone's computer in order to integrate the "banking system" with their computer. Minimum of 150 GB lol.

I guess that means in the future you'll have a computer that's solely for bitcoin purposes, which is more secure in the long run.

I agree with the others, it's not about the nodes, but rather your computer's specs. It's 150 GB that your hard drive has to validate via processors and such. Not going to be a lightning fast process... but once it's done, you'll finally have bitcoin core running and you can make cold wallets and everything.

[leowonderful]

Wow, with 0.22% every hour... I can see this as being a huge barrier to BTC adoption by normal people.

It's probably why people resort to using hardware wallets, like Trezor, or online web wallets.

But, I guess in the same token... if Bitcoin is to be used as a banking alternative, with utmost security... then it only makes sense that high tech specs are required by someone's computer in order to integrate the "banking system" with their computer. Minimum of 150 GB lol.

I guess that means in the future you'll have a computer that's solely for bitcoin purposes, which is more secure in the long run.

I agree with the others, it's not about the nodes, but rather your computer's specs. It's 150 GB that your hard drive has to validate via processors and such. Not going to be a lightning fast process... but once it's done, you'll finally have bitcoin core running and you can make cold wallets and everything.

I don't even have Core installed on my computer. For normal use I have electrum, and for cold storage I have hardware wallets to store my coins.

Most people will opt to use Electrum anyways, since the regular Joe who looks into BTC will want fast sync times and won't need all the features of Core. Electrum's secure enough for regular use if you use an encrypted wallet and don't go waltzing around pasting your private key or getting viruses on your computer. If you want to securely store your coins or seldom use your coins, a hardware wallet is best. For just secure storage, a paper wallet is a good and cheap option (treat paper wallets as one-use items).

Both Core and SPV both have their benefits and downsides, but if you use the right precautions an SPV wallet is just fine for use. Security-wise, a good implementation like Electrum makes an attack difficult.

[BillyBobZorton]

From what I've read, gaps in network activity are due poor performance somewhere on the user's computer. Probably the software downloads a chunk of the blockchain and as it downloads it has to validate, so it takes a while to validate and it stops downloading until the validation is complete... im not sure if this is the way it works, but me personally, I got it to download smoother once I update my HDD to SSD and got a better CPU. I tried a bunch of stuff and I was never able to get a smooth download with no big gaps on my older computer, and I had a decent connectivity of 8 peers on average at all times.

Thank you for your kind advice. I'll try updating my HDD. I have 4 GB ram, I'll update it too. Soon, I'll report it back whether it worked or not.

Ideally you want 16 GB of DDR4 ram, an SSD as fast as possible (the m.2 type) and an i7 computer or AMD equivalent.

And as far as regular users not needing to run a full node, it doesn't mean that we should raise the blocksize since "only hardcore users will run full nodes". Some people want to run full nodes and do but couldn't be able to do it with bigger blocksizes. So be careful with this "only hardcore users should run nodes, the rest SPV" argument.

[Jet Cash]

Ideally you want 16 GB of DDR4 ram, an SSD as fast as possible (the m.2 type) and an i7 computer or AMD equivalent.

The extra ram makes a difference, and I sync'd my Linux node today, and that has an external SSD. Despite the fact that it is external, it sync'd a lot faster.

It looks as if I'm going to have to replace my Windows machine, and I'm thinking of getting an i7 with a 512Mb SSD instead of a 2Tb HDD. I can always use an external drive for the extra storage.

[BillyBobZorton]

Ideally you want 16 GB of DDR4 ram, an SSD as fast as possible (the m.2 type) and an i7 computer or AMD equivalent.

The extra ram makes a difference, and I sync'd my Linux node today, and that has an external SSD. Despite the fact that it is external, it sync'd a lot faster.

It looks as if I'm going to have to replace my Windows machine, and I'm thinking of getting an i7 with a 512Mb SSD instead of a 2Tb HDD. I can always use an external drive for the extra storage.

But you need to store the blockchain files within the SSD in order to profit from the speed of the SSD drive. I guess if you have your OS in the SSD and the Bitcoin Core folder in the HDD it will still be faster, but from what i've read, you must have the OS and the Bitcoin Core folder (with all the blockchain files in there which means you need a big SSD) in order to max out your speed.

[HCP]

Or you just need to get two SSDs... a "small" one for the OS... the largest you can realistically afford for the blockchain data.

To be honest, I have my OS on an SSD... and the blockchain on an ageing mechanical HDD... from memory it's a Western Digital Blue 7200 RPM Sata 6GB 1TB drive... I also have an ageing Core i5-3570K with a rather paltry 8Gig RAM... 17 megabit ADSL2+ connection...

Syncing isn't lightning fast... would probably take a few days to sync from scratch again... but it works. You don't need the latest and greatest, just a bit of patience

[Jet Cash]

Or you just need to get two SSDs... a "small" one for the OS... the largest you can realistically afford for the blockchain data.

To be honest, I have my OS on an SSD... and the blockchain on an ageing mechanical HDD... from memory it's a Western Digital Blue 7200 RPM Sata 6GB 1TB drive... I also have an ageing Core i5-3570K with a rather paltry 8Gig RAM... 17 megabit ADSL2+ connection...

Syncing isn't lightning fast... would probably take a few days to sync from scratch again... but it works. You don't need the latest and greatest, just a bit of patience

Following on from the failure of my main notebook, I'm thinking of upgrading it. I fixed the problem which seem to have been caused by dust on the fan, which caused the machine to overheat whilst it was doing a secret Windows "upgrade" in the background. The processor is a Core i5-4210U @ 1.70 GHz, which is not the fastest, but seems to be OK for most of the things I do. It's got a 2Tb hard drive, and I'm thinking of replacing that with a 1Tb Samsung SSD ( the new faster one ). Memory is 8Gb, but I noticed that there is an empty slot, and I can add another 8Gb which is supported by the bios. The SSD should extend the time between battery recharging requirements as well as speeding things up.

The alternative is to buy a newer notebook, but I think my upgrade will tide me over until I need a faster machine to process video files that I have created. I'll probably replace Windows with a Linux variant, as most of my problems seem to be Windows related, and I don't have them on the Ubuntu netbook.

[BillyBobZorton]

Or you just need to get two SSDs... a "small" one for the OS... the largest you can realistically afford for the blockchain data.

To be honest, I have my OS on an SSD... and the blockchain on an ageing mechanical HDD... from memory it's a Western Digital Blue 7200 RPM Sata 6GB 1TB drive... I also have an ageing Core i5-3570K with a rather paltry 8Gig RAM... 17 megabit ADSL2+ connection...

Syncing isn't lightning fast... would probably take a few days to sync from scratch again... but it works. You don't need the latest and greatest, just a bit of patience

Following on from the failure of my main notebook, I'm thinking of upgrading it. I fixed the problem which seem to have been caused by dust on the fan, which caused the machine to overheat whilst it was doing a secret Windows "upgrade" in the background. The processor is a Core i5-4210U @ 1.70 GHz, which is not the fastest, but seems to be OK for most of the things I do. It's got a 2Tb hard drive, and I'm thinking of replacing that with a 1Tb Samsung SSD ( the new faster one ). Memory is 8Gb, but I noticed that there is an empty slot, and I can add another 8Gb which is supported by the bios. The SSD should extend the time between battery recharging requirements as well as speeding things up.

The alternative is to buy a newer notebook, but I think my upgrade will tide me over until I need a faster machine to process video files that I have created. I'll probably replace Windows with a Linux variant, as most of my problems seem to be Windows related, and I don't have them on the Ubuntu netbook.

I don't think it's worth it going from 8GB to 16GB unless you are into video editing, audio editing, or in general media editing, in which you could maybe profit from it, but honestly, I think to run a node it's not going to make a big difference. Has anyone seen seen bitcoin's client consume more than 6 GB? I haven't seen many apps challenging a 8GB setup, other than next videogames...

If you get a Linux notebook, Linux will consume even less resources, which means even more free RAM for bitcoin's client to use.

[Jet Cash]

Running core is a bit of a background task for me, and the main reason is for me to have control of the wallet. I'm back to having two nodes, one on a netbook with an external SSD, and one on this Windows machine. That seems a bit excessive, so I'll probably just run with the netbook. I was going to use the main machine to pick up some coins from the recent forks, but I might do that on the netbook by using a different external drive, but I haven't researched that.

I'm getting quite keen on the update for the notebook, and I've been looking at Ubuntu Studio. That includes software like Audacity, Blender and Gimp amongst others, and this may be the way for me to go. I hear what you are saying about the memory, but there is an empty socket, so while the case is open, it may be worth adding an extra 8Gb. I can't see it doing any harm.

Sorry, this seems to have gone a bit off topic, but my experience with the netbook and an external SSD does seem to confirm the opinions posted earlier.