Number of connections

[sirius]

Is there some hard-coded maximum limit for the amount of connections? I see 45 connections atm. It's been growing nicely in the last months. Just can't get that many coins anymore...

[satoshi]

Nodes stop trying to initiate connections once they have 15.  If you can accept incoming connections, then you can get well above that from nodes connecting to you, otherwise you max out at 15.

I don't know if there's any reason to have 15 connections.  Maybe it should be 10.

Since nodes that can only connect out are probably at or near 15 most of the time now, you should level off to an equilibrium.  45 suggests a ratio of 3 out-only nodes to every 1 in-accepting node.

The number of connections won't be a good gauge of the size of the network any more.  Someone should periodically IRC to the bitcoin channel on chat.freenode.net and count the number of users.  That gives you the total count of network nodes (except TOR nodes).

Block generation is again running ahead of pace.  We're in for another big step up in difficulty at the next adjustment in about 5 days.

[Xunie]

Nodes stop trying to initiate connections once they have 15. 

Are you sure about that? I get 30+ connections easily!
I have port 8333 open, but I can't exactly believe everynode of the network connects to me.
(I'm running version 0.2, downloaded from the website.)

[NewLibertyStandard]

Nodes stop trying to initiate connections once they have 15. 

Are you sure about that? I get 30+ connections easily!
I have port 8333 open, but I can't exactly believe everynode of the network connects to me.
(I'm running version 0.2, downloaded from the website.)

The client stops making outgoing connections once it has 15 connections but if your port is open it continues accepting incoming connections from other clients which haven't yet connected to 15 clients. If the port isn't open, it can't accept incoming connections so it will never connect to more than 15 clients.

[Xunie]

Nodes stop trying to initiate connections once they have 15. 

Are you sure about that? I get 30+ connections easily!
I have port 8333 open, but I can't exactly believe everynode of the network connects to me.
(I'm running version 0.2, downloaded from the website.)

The client stops making outgoing connections once it has 15 connections but if your port is open it continues accepting incoming connections from other clients which haven't yet connected to 15 clients. If the port isn't open, it can't accept incoming connections so it will never connect to more than 15 clients.

It does however seem unreal, if some people only get 8 and I can get 40+.
We should make a user-pickable connection limit, for both incoming and outgoing connections.

[The Madhatter]

I average around 32-40 on each of my machines. I have port forwarding setup and my machines are on big connections. I'd like to actually increase the number of connections.

[theymos]

I usually have 45-50 connections on my always-on computer. I counted 49 users in IRC, so it looks like I'm connected to nearly everyone.

[fergalish]

Is there any way to know the overall size of the bitcoin network?  From the IRC list?  It would be *very* instructive to see how it changes over time - can someone post a graph please (I'm firewalled)?  Generation is continuously getting harder (see hash target value), and the rate at which it gets harder seems to be increasing suggesting that the number of new nodes per week is rapidly increasing - is bitcoin going viral?  How will network latencies behave given the current trend?  How about a graph of the number of weekly downloads?  Can anyone provide?

Could satoshi please update the "proof-of-work difficulty increasing" thread please?  By now there should have been 26 difficulty adjustments.

Edit: a graph of the number of transactions would also be nice.

[sirius]

Irc statistics would be interesting indeed. Lately there's been around 100 users online at any time. A few months ago it was like 30.

[theymos]

Difficulty just had a huge jump from 7.8% to 11.5% -- likely the biggest jump so far. Link2Voip sent out an email promoting BitCoin, so maybe they're responsible.

[Link2VoIP]