Author: Leo Wandersleb 2015-07-23 16:36:53
Published on: 2015-07-23T16:36:53+00:00
On July 23, 2015, the Bitcoin network was tested to determine if it could safely support a faster block rate. The testing methodology involved randomly selecting nodes from a peers.dat and contacting 5% of the reachable nodes in the network. A random selection of blocks was downloaded from each peer while bias towards higher connection speeds and very slow connections existed. The connecting node was located in Amsterdam with a 1GB NIC. Results showed that 37% of connected nodes failed to upload blocks faster than 1MB/s, whereas 16% of connected nodes uploaded blocks faster than 10MB/s. Raw data is available at http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=6b4NuiVQ. This result did not support the theory that the network had the available bandwidth for increased block sizes as currently 37% of nodes would fail to upload a 20MB block to a single peer in under 20 seconds. For comparison, only 10% fail this metric for 1MB blocks.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T03:35:04.145327+00:00