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Reduce Traffic
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==============
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Some node operators need to deal with bandwidth caps imposed by their ISPs.
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By default, Bitcoin Core allows up to 125 connections to different peers, 10 of
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which are outbound. You can therefore, have at most 115 inbound connections.
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Of the 10 outbound peers, there can be 8 full-relay connections and 2
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block-relay-only ones.
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The default settings can result in relatively significant traffic consumption.
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Ways to reduce traffic:
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## 1. Use `-maxuploadtarget=<MiB per day>`
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A major component of the traffic is caused by serving historic blocks to other nodes
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during the initial blocks download phase (syncing up a new node).
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This option can be specified in MiB per day and is turned off by default.
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This is *not* a hard limit; only a threshold to minimize the outbound
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traffic. When the limit is about to be reached, the uploaded data is cut by no
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longer serving historic blocks (blocks older than one week).
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Keep in mind that new nodes require other nodes that are willing to serve
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historic blocks.
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Peers with the `download` permission will never be disconnected, although their traffic counts for
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calculating the target.
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## 2. Disable "listening" (`-listen=0`)
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Disabling listening will result in fewer nodes connected (remember the maximum of 10
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outbound peers). Fewer nodes will result in less traffic usage as you are relaying
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blocks and transactions to fewer nodes.
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## 3. Reduce maximum connections (`-maxconnections=<num>`)
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Reducing the maximum connected nodes to a minimum could be desirable if traffic
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limits are tiny. Keep in mind that bitcoin's trustless model works best if you are
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connected to a handful of nodes.
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## 4. Turn off transaction relay (`-blocksonly`)
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Forwarding transactions to peers increases the P2P traffic. To only sync blocks
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with other peers, you can disable transaction relay.
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Be reminded of the effects of this setting.
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- Fee estimation will no longer work.
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- It sets the flag "-walletbroadcast" to be "0", only if it is currently unset.
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Doing so disables the automatic broadcasting of transactions from wallet. Not
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relaying other's transactions could hurt your privacy if used while a wallet
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is loaded or if you use the node to broadcast transactions.
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- If a peer is whitelisted and "-whitelistforcerelay" is set to "1" (which will
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also set "whitelistrelay" to "1"), we will still receive and relay their transactions.
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- It makes block propagation slower because compact block relay can only be
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used when transaction relay is enabled.
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