Author: Warren Togami Jr. 2013-08-16 13:41:54
Published on: 2013-08-16T13:41:54+00:00
The email conversation between members of Bitcoin-development mailing list discusses various aspects of the Bitcoin network. A suggestion was made to develop an anti-DoS framework that disallows the same IP and/or subnet from establishing too many TCP connections with a node. This would make it more expensive for attackers to use a single host to exhaust a target node's resources. The concept of configurable per source IP and source subnet limits with sane defaults enforced by bitcoind itself would be a significant improvement over the current situation where one host address can consume limited resources of many target nodes. However, this does not remove the risk of a network-wide connection exhaustion attack by a determined attacker.Another topic discussed was the block size limit increase. Gavin Andresen was working on three things: smarter fee handling on the client-side, "First double-spend" relaying and alerting, and working on 2-3 whitepapers on why there is a need to increase or remove the 1MB block size limit, how it can be done safely, and going through all the arguments that have been made against it and explaining why they're wrong. On the other hand, Mike Hearn suggested evicting the whitepapers to make room for the development of an anti-DoS framework. Nonetheless, he also mentioned that there is still plenty of headroom in block sizes, even post-April, and it can probably be safely delayed for a while.In conclusion, the email thread highlights some significant concerns and developments regarding the security and scalability of the Bitcoin network. The discussion around implementing an anti-DoS framework and increasing the block size limit show that the community is actively working to improve the network's performance and security.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T15:59:10.597219+00:00