Author: Matt Whitlock 2015-05-26 04:56:28
Published on: 2015-05-26T04:56:28+00:00
The email conversation started with a question about who would perform a Sybil attack against themselves, given that all nodes in a LAN would be under the control of the same entity. Kevin Greene responded by saying that in order to make it as difficult as possible for an attacker to perform a Sybil attack, one should choose a set of peers that is as diverse and unpredictable as possible. Matt Whitlock added that it is simple to ping the "all nodes" address and try connecting to TCP port 8333 of each node that responds.Jim Phillips then asked if there was any work being done on using some kind of zero-conf service discovery protocol so that lightweight clients could find a full node on the same LAN to peer with rather than having to tie up WAN bandwidth. He envisioned a future where lightweight devices within a home use SPV over WiFi to connect with a home server which in turn relays the transactions they create out to the larger and faster relays on the Internet.This approach could result in lower traffic across the slow WAN connection, especially in a situation where there are hundreds or thousands of small SPV devices in a single home monitoring the blockchain. Phillips acknowledged that it could potentially take a lot of these devices before the total bandwidth is greater than downloading a full copy of the blockchain, but there are other reasons to host your own full node -- trust being one.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T21:21:43.826259+00:00