Author: Matt Corallo 2012-03-13 19:48:02
Published on: 2012-03-13T19:48:02+00:00
A new message called "pong" has been added to the Bitcoin protocol on Github. This message echoes back a 64-bit nonce contained in the ping if the protocol version is new enough. The purpose of this addition is to make it easier for clients, particularly mobile clients, to quickly determine whether a connection is stale or if a remote node is overloaded. This can help to avoid talking to the node if it is busy doing something intensive like downloading the blockchain. While there were no objections to this addition, some users did ask why TCP keepalives were not used instead. However, it was pointed out that keepalives do not provide information about whether the node itself is overloaded.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T00:32:51.419199+00:00