2 nodes on same home network?

[slowLearner2]

Found out that my bitcoining interest is spreading and a family member is now running a node of their own. My question is what issues can this cause if they both use default settings/clearnet. I suppose they’d both have the same IP address which seems….bad. Will they both operate correctly, or will they get confused? My only changes to the configuration file are as follows: listen=1 server=1 add node=127.0.0.1. That’s it. My main question is do I need to urgently change anything, or am I ok for now minus not getting many peers to connect? Or do I need to right away change IP address/set up hidden service Tor or something so my node is differentiated from theirs? Thanks as always

[philipma1957]

well you could do 28.1 and 29.1

which should work.

my Apollo gives many choices of nodes I use 28.1

my core I use 29.1 I put it off line most of the time
my other core uses 28.1 I put it off line most of the time.

if I run both cores and the Apollo they seem to stay separate

the cores hold some coin so if I send from them I only run them.

so far no confusion
I also run a doge wallet and a grin wallet

all seems well

[slowLearner2]

well you could do 28.1 and 29.1

which should work.

my Apollo gives many choices of nodes I use 28.1

my core I use 29.1 I put it off line most of the time
my other core uses 28.1 I put it off line most of the time.

if I run both cores and the Apollo they seem to stay separate

the cores hold some coin so if I send from them I only run them.

so far no confusion
I also run a doge wallet and a grin wallet

all seems well

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2026/08/21/U5aiDN.png

Thanks. I hadn’t thought of what happens when we’re running different software versions. Does the network (ie other peers) see us as the same “peer” since it’s the same IP address, but they can only connect to one of the two actual machines? There’d be one “half” of our “peer” with one version of the client and another “half” of our same peer with a different client version. And I suppose they’d never actually connect to each other?

[philipma1957]

well you could do 28.1 and 29.1

which should work.

my Apollo gives many choices of nodes I use 28.1

my core I use 29.1 I put it off line most of the time
my other core uses 28.1 I put it off line most of the time.

if I run both cores and the Apollo they seem to stay separate

the cores hold some coin so if I send from them I only run them.

so far no confusion
I also run a doge wallet and a grin wallet

all seems well

Thanks. I hadn’t thought of what happens when we’re running different software versions. Does the network (ie other peers) see us as the same “peer” since it’s the same IP address, but they can only connect to one of the two actual machines? There’d be one “half” of our “peer” with one version of the client and another “half” of our same peer with a different client version. And I suppose they’d never actually connect to each other?

that is an interesting question.

if both are set to do in and out traffic

I think they show as different nodes. They have different Mac addresses

but I am not sure.

DaveF does a lot more I.T. work  than me he may know.

maybe he will reply to it

[crwth]

Wouldn't this be about the public IP and not the internal home network IP?

Like a private LAN would have the 192.168.1.x and for Bitcoin peers, it's the public IP + port?

Code:

203.x.x.x:8333 
203.x.x.x:8334

Which are different end points so it should be okay right?
And nodes have unique nonce as well. It will be treated differently.

[slowLearner2]

Wouldn't this be about the public IP and not the internal home network IP?

Like a private LAN would have the 192.168.1.x and for Bitcoin peers, it's the public IP + port?

Code:

203.x.x.x:8333 
203.x.x.x:8334

Which are different end points so it should be okay right?
And nodes have unique nonce as well. It will be treated differently.

Yeah but how does it work when 2 machines have the same public IP and try to use the same default port when the network differentiates peers based off public IP and port? Gets me thinking about VPN users too because won’t a bunch of those peers have the same public IP if they connect to the same VPN server

[BlackBoss_]

Lopp has his page for Bitcoin Core Configuration Generator and I think you can look at it and learn many things for your Bitcoin node configuration.
https://jlopp.github.io/bitcoin-core-config-generator/

This guide has an important warning about running two Bitcoin nodes from a same IP address.
Home Bitcoin Node: Privacy and Setup Guide.

Remember that you run Bitcoin nodes to get better privacy.

Common mistakes to avoid

5. Configuring multiple nodes on the same network with conflicting settings. Running two Bitcoin Core instances on the same local network with different configurations (one Tor-only, one clearnet) can create privacy leaks where your Tor node's traffic is correlated with your clearnet node's IP address. If you need multiple nodes, ensure they operate with consistent privacy settings or isolate them on separate network segments.

[slowLearner2]

Wouldn't this be about the public IP and not the internal home network IP?

Like a private LAN would have the 192.168.1.x and for Bitcoin peers, it's the public IP + port?

Code:

203.x.x.x:8333 
203.x.x.x:8334

Which are different end points so it should be okay right?
And nodes have unique nonce as well. It will be treated differently.

Ok after reading some more, I think you’re right, and I think I see what you’re saying. 8333 only matters for inbound connections. So you could fire up 5 bitcoin nodes on one home network, all with default settings, and they’d all work fine and get 10 outbound connections eventually. They’d use different ports to make outbound connections to 8333 with peers. If you set all to -listen=1 only 1 of the 5 nodes would get inbound connections. How the router would decide, I don’t know. I could use -connect=<local IP address of listening node> to connect the 2, but I don’t see any advantage.

[Antidote47k]

Does the network (ie other peers) see us as the same “peer” since it’s the same IP address, but they can only connect to one of the two actual machines? There’d be one “half” of our “peer” with one version of the client and another “half” of our same peer with a different client version. And I suppose they’d never actually connect to each other?

I’m not sure if that will be the case, both should be able to establish their own outband connections with the router handling different NAT mappings for each. This situation is different for inbound connections, If both nodes are listening on the default port 8333, your router generally can’t forward the same public IP:8333 connection to two different machines at the same time. So unless the router is configured differently, only one of the nodes can normally be the publicly reachable destination on that port.
So technically you should be fine unless you’ve specifically disabled outband connections or both are sharing the same configurations they shouldn’t be.

[slowLearner2]

Lopp has his page for Bitcoin Core Configuration Generator and I think you can look at it and learn many things for your Bitcoin node configuration.
https://jlopp.github.io/bitcoin-core-config-generator/

This guide has an important warning about running two Bitcoin nodes from a same IP address.
Home Bitcoin Node: Privacy and Setup Guide.

Remember that you run Bitcoin nodes to get better privacy.

Common mistakes to avoid

5. Configuring multiple nodes on the same network with conflicting settings. Running two Bitcoin Core instances on the same local network with different configurations (one Tor-only, one clearnet) can create privacy leaks where your Tor node's traffic is correlated with your clearnet node's IP address. If you need multiple nodes, ensure they operate with consistent privacy settings or isolate them on separate network segments.

Thank you! Maybe there is a use case for the “connect” configuration. If one node uses Tor, have the other node only connect to the Tor node, right?

I’m trying to understand the privacy leakage for the Tor node if there’s a clearnet node on the same network. All the bitcoin traffic is encrypted on the Tor node still, so what is Lopp referring to? That the public IP is connected to bitcoin activity from the clearnet node, so the ISP knows it’s a btc household, losing the benefits of running Tor on the other node?