On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 12:52:46AM -0800, Jeremy Spilman wrote: > Some really nice efforts out there to map and analyze the bitcoin P2P > network. > > The current protocol apparently recommends returning up to 2500 addresses > from 'getaddr'. I'm not sure how much clients are expected to probe the > address space in order to select 'far-apart' peers, or how much such an > process would even attempt to achieve.
The logic is that by simply connecting to peers at random you keep the network structure as a whole randomized. You don't need to make any specific attempt at connecting to "far-apart" peers. > How much does it matter if the ability to discover the entire network of > peers is fast or slow? There are probably pros and cons to both. > > Is there any thought to how existing bitcoin node relations, and the ease > at which peers can be discovered, becomes a service in itself, or even > possibly a vulnerability? Keep in mind it's easy for better knowledge of the network to be a vulnerability; the number of full nodes is small enough that DoS attacking all of them is quite feasible. The other big vulnerability is that getaddr data is best effort; we currently have no mechanism to ensure that nodes are in fact operated by separate individuals. It'd be quite easy for someone to set up a relatively small number of nodes that only advertise themselves in the getaddr information. Over time they would get proportionally more incoming connections than is "fair" As for node addresses being a service, that's what the DNS seeds are! bitcoinj clients, for instance, depend very heavily on those seeds and can be easily compromised in a variety of ways by them. -- 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org 000000000000000092a315c01cfc115d7f1b40dc44edbafd504b0d7498b0704a
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