Bitcoin client only makes 8 connections

[bitsire]

I did some searching and it was mentioned that you can get more than this by doing some port forwarding but I couldn't find any instructions anywhere. Anyone know how to do this in either Linux or Mac?

Thanks!

[1714837701]

1714837701

[MoonShadow]

You have a firewall blocking incoming connections.  Could be the computer, or it could be upstream from it.  The first step is to figure out where your firewall is.

Honestly, you don't need more than 8, unless you're going to be mining locally & solo.  Technically, you don't need more than three even while bootstrapping.  Most computers choke on the verification of the blocks, not on the peer bandwidth anyway.

[bitsire]

Thanks MoonShadow. I am using the BitSafe installation on a USB stick and at first it took me 4 full days to download the blockchain. I just booted into it again this afternoon and it was behind by 11 days and it still hasn't caught up. Is this normal? I have a very fast internet connection but I'm thinking the usb stick might be slow...

[MoonShadow]

Thanks MoonShadow. I am using the BitSafe installation on a USB stick and at first it took me 4 full days to download the blockchain. I just booted into it again this afternoon and it was behind by 11 days and it still hasn't caught up. Is this normal? I have a very fast internet connection but I'm thinking the usb stick might be slow...

All USB sticks are slow, mostly because USB is slow.  Expecially if your pc only has a USB 1.1 host chip.  I could see such a thing taking a full four days to bootstrap a full gig, because there is more to verifying a single block than a single copy action.  There is a huge amount of disk action that goes on with the bitcoin index/database files.  That's most likely where your problem lies.  On my nearly brand new Imac, a new install took me 7 hours to bootstrap using the internal harddrive, and the case/monitor was actually hot.  Even a couple hours of TF2 won't make that thing more than warm.  If you intend to keep your complete client & data on a USB drive, I recommend a USB 3.0 card.

[bitsire]

Wow, I had no idea that Bitcoin was so drive-intensive. Oh well, no biggie - now that I know I'll probably get off the USB stick and have a dedicated machine or something.

Thanks a lot for the good info MoonShadow!

[knowledgeable]

It took me 3hr with a solid state drive.  It blew through the first 60% or so in just a few minutes, but then got slower and slower.

[lky_svn]

Found the documentation around this a bit confusing myself...

Per default bitcoin is running on port 8333.
Per default bitcoin tries to map the port forwarding via upnp, but depends on your router whether that's supported. You can set in options.

I've setup port forwarding and now have about 10 connections. Not sure if it actually helped much, but thought it can't hurt

[Kupsi]

If you let the client run a day or two, you'll see 30+ connections (as long as port forwarding is OK). I guess you'll recieve info about transactions faster as large nodes like Blockchain.info now can connect to you. You can search for your IP in Blockchain.info's connected nodes to see if it's connected: http://www.blockchain.info/connected-nodes

[4EverMaAT]

UpnP is not working for me. (I use windows 2008 R2 64 bit VPS).  I will try port forwarding.  Is there any specific directions to do this?  Everyone is talking about port forwarding, but I do not see a guide how to do it.

edit:  I think I got it to work by disabling UPnP on the bitcoin client settings, then adding bitcoin-qt.exe to the windows firewall.  I now have 18-20 connections.

[4EverMaAT]

How can someone view what different nodes (IP addresses specifically) are connecting to their client?  I'm surprised there is no gui chart/table with that information readily available.  Only the tooltip of the total connections.

[coyotama]

the 8 connection limit is the limit of outgoing connections that the reference client makes if you cannot receive incoming connections.

bitcoin, by default, although this can certainly be changed, receives incoming connections on tcp port 8333.

if you keep your bitcoin node online consistently, with your port forwarded (you can learn how to port forward on other forums or sites, such as http://portforward.com/help/portforwarding.htm which explains it fairly well) you should collect many tcp connections over time.

all in all, if you have 8 connections, your bitcoin client is working, but only nominally. if you accept incoming connections (thus helping to allow others to join the bitcoin network who cannot receive incoming connections) your confirms are likely to happen more quickly (even if only slightly. your milage may vary. )

[joemde]

How safe is it to accept incoming connections? Are there any security risks associated with this?

[scaryzet]

How safe is it to accept incoming connections? Are there any security risks associated with this?

Any software which operates on network level could be theoretically exploited for remote execution of arbitrary code. Users of Bitcoin (and Bitcoin client) trust it and its history of stability (lack of critical vulnerabilities).