High-speed Bitcoin Relay Network

> Recently, there has been a reasonable amount of discussion about the
> continued fragility of the public Bitcoin network on IRC and elsewhere
> (1). To this extent, I'm organizing a system of peering between nodes in
> the network by creating a system of high-speed relay nodes for miners
> and merchants/exchanges. This system will a) act as a fallback in the
> case that the public Bitcoin network encounters issues and b) decrease
> block propagation times between miners.
> It is NOT designed to in any way replace or decrease the need for the
> public Bitcoin P2P network. It is NOT any kind of attempt at
> centralization, and I still encourage interested parties to establish
> their own private peering agreements with large miners as needed.
>
> Currently the network consists of one specially-designed relay node, but
> I hope to bring more online in the coming days.
>
> This network is open to everyone via a few public relay nodes, but also
> will have nodes which are made available only to large miners and
> merchants/exchanges to mitigate the ability of malicious parties to DoS
> the network.
>
> To peer with the public relay nodes, simply select the closest region
> out of us-west (West Coast US), us-east (East Coast US), eu (Western
> Europe), au (Australia), or jpy (Japan) and add
> public.REGION.relay.mattcorallo.com to your addnode list. Note that
> since all of the relay nodes will relay between each other, you gain no
> latency advantage by peering with more than the closest node to you (and
> currently all the regions map to one node, so there they're redundant
> anyway).
>
> For each relay node, you can connect to either port 8334 or 8335.
> Connecting on port 8334 will relay only blocks, and port 8335 will relay
> both blocks and transactions. The relay nodes will request any
> transactions which appear in your invs no matter which port you connect to.
>
> Relay node details:
>  * The relay nodes do some data verification to prevent DoS, but in
> order to keep relay fast, they do not fully verify the data they are
> relaying, thus YOU SHOULD NEVER mine a block building on top of a
> relayed block without fully checking it with your own bitcoin validator
> (as you would any other block relayed from the P2P network).
>  * The relay nodes do not follow the standard inv-getdata-tx/block flow,
> but instead relay transactions/blocks immediately after they have done
> their cursory verification. They do keep some track of whether or not
> your nodes claim to have seen the transactions/blocks before relaying,
> but you may see transactions/blocks being sent which you already have
> and have not requested, if this is a problem for you due to bandwith
> issues, you should reconsider your bandwith constraints and/or are
> peering with too many nodes.
>  * The relay nodes will all relay among themselves very quickly, so
> there is no advantage to peering with as many relay nodes as you can
> find, in fact, the increased incoming bandwidth during block relay
> spikes may result in higher latency for your nodes.
>  * The relay nodes are NOT designed to ensure that you never miss data,
> and may fail to relay some transactions. Additionally, because the relay
> nodes do not respond to standard getdata requests, if you miss a relay
> and then reconnect, that data will not be sent again by the relay nodes.
> The relay nodes are NOT a replacement for having peers on the standard
> P2P network, they are only there to augment the existing P2P network.
>
> If you are a merchant/exchange/large miner/other important node operator
> and wish to gain access to additional domain names which map to relay
> nodes with fewer peers, please fill out the form at
>
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UL82QdcXXEhZwSHJAK04Sk_cWg4zLOu8a216nO7Mt8c/viewform
>
> You can find the source for the relay nodes at
> https://github.com/TheBlueMatt/RelayNode
>
> If you have any comments/concerns/suggestions, please do not hesitate to
> email bitcoin-peering@mattcorallo•com
>
> Thanks,
> Matt
>
>
> (1) There has been extended discussion on #bitcoin-wizards as well as
> #bitcoin-dev of the very small number of active, listening nodes.
> Additionally, because many of those nodes are versions prior to 0.8.4,
> it seems very likely that maliciously creating network splits or at
> least drastically reducing the number of peers for most nodes would not
> be particularly challenging in the current network. Also,
>
> http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23fc0/P2P2013_041.pdf
> noted that they were able to single-handledly decrease the network-wide
> orphan rate by around 50% by improving network peering. Finally, you've
> all seen the recent discussion on malicious mining algorithms. Though
> those are not entirely prevented by reducing block propagation times,
> they can be significantly limited compared to the current, rather
> disjoint, network.
>
>
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>

> Recently, there has been a reasonable amount of discussion about the
> continued fragility of the public Bitcoin network on IRC and elsewhere
> (1). To this extent, I'm organizing a system of peering between nodes in
> the network by creating a system of high-speed relay nodes for miners
> and merchants/exchanges. This system will a) act as a fallback in the
> case that the public Bitcoin network encounters issues and b) decrease
> block propagation times between miners.
> It is NOT designed to in any way replace or decrease the need for the
> public Bitcoin P2P network. It is NOT any kind of attempt at
> centralization, and I still encourage interested parties to establish
> their own private peering agreements with large miners as needed.
>
> Currently the network consists of one specially-designed relay node, but
> I hope to bring more online in the coming days.
>
> This network is open to everyone via a few public relay nodes, but also
> will have nodes which are made available only to large miners and
> merchants/exchanges to mitigate the ability of malicious parties to DoS
> the network.
>
> To peer with the public relay nodes, simply select the closest region
> out of us-west (West Coast US), us-east (East Coast US), eu (Western
> Europe), au (Australia), or jpy (Japan) and add
> public.REGION.relay.mattcorallo.com to your addnode list. Note that
> since all of the relay nodes will relay between each other, you gain no
> latency advantage by peering with more than the closest node to you (and
> currently all the regions map to one node, so there they're redundant
> anyway).
>
> For each relay node, you can connect to either port 8334 or 8335.
> Connecting on port 8334 will relay only blocks, and port 8335 will relay
> both blocks and transactions. The relay nodes will request any
> transactions which appear in your invs no matter which port you connect to.
>
> Relay node details:
>  * The relay nodes do some data verification to prevent DoS, but in
> order to keep relay fast, they do not fully verify the data they are
> relaying, thus YOU SHOULD NEVER mine a block building on top of a
> relayed block without fully checking it with your own bitcoin validator
> (as you would any other block relayed from the P2P network).
>  * The relay nodes do not follow the standard inv-getdata-tx/block flow,
> but instead relay transactions/blocks immediately after they have done
> their cursory verification. They do keep some track of whether or not
> your nodes claim to have seen the transactions/blocks before relaying,
> but you may see transactions/blocks being sent which you already have
> and have not requested, if this is a problem for you due to bandwith
> issues, you should reconsider your bandwith constraints and/or are
> peering with too many nodes.
>  * The relay nodes will all relay among themselves very quickly, so
> there is no advantage to peering with as many relay nodes as you can
> find, in fact, the increased incoming bandwidth during block relay
> spikes may result in higher latency for your nodes.
>  * The relay nodes are NOT designed to ensure that you never miss data,
> and may fail to relay some transactions. Additionally, because the relay
> nodes do not respond to standard getdata requests, if you miss a relay
> and then reconnect, that data will not be sent again by the relay nodes.
> The relay nodes are NOT a replacement for having peers on the standard
> P2P network, they are only there to augment the existing P2P network.
>
> If you are a merchant/exchange/large miner/other important node operator
> and wish to gain access to additional domain names which map to relay
> nodes with fewer peers, please fill out the form at
>
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UL82QdcXXEhZwSHJAK04Sk_cWg4zLOu8a216nO7Mt8c/viewform
>
> You can find the source for the relay nodes at
> https://github.com/TheBlueMatt/RelayNode
>
> If you have any comments/concerns/suggestions, please do not hesitate to
> email bitcoin-peering@mattcorallo•com
>
> Thanks,
> Matt
>
>
> (1) There has been extended discussion on #bitcoin-wizards as well as
> #bitcoin-dev of the very small number of active, listening nodes.
> Additionally, because many of those nodes are versions prior to 0.8.4,
> it seems very likely that maliciously creating network splits or at
> least drastically reducing the number of peers for most nodes would not
> be particularly challenging in the current network. Also,
>
> http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23fc0/P2P2013_041.pdf
> noted that they were able to single-handledly decrease the network-wide
> orphan rate by around 50% by improving network peering. Finally, you've
> all seen the recent discussion on malicious mining algorithms. Though
> those are not entirely prevented by reducing block propagation times,
> they can be significantly limited compared to the current, rather
> disjoint, network.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers
> Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models.
> Explore
> techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the most
> from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and
> register
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60136231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge•net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>

> Relay node details:
>  * The relay nodes do some data verification to prevent DoS, but in
> order to keep relay fast, they do not fully verify the data they are
> relaying, thus YOU SHOULD NEVER mine a block building on top of a
> relayed block without fully checking it with your own bitcoin validator
> (as you would any other block relayed from the P2P network).
>

>
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 5:50 AM, Matt Corallo <bitcoin-list@bluematt•me
> <mailto:bitcoin-list@bluematt.me>> wrote:
>
>     Relay node details:
>      * The relay nodes do some data verification to prevent DoS, but in
>     order to keep relay fast, they do not fully verify the data they are
>     relaying, thus YOU SHOULD NEVER mine a block building on top of a
>     relayed block without fully checking it with your own bitcoin validator
>     (as you would any other block relayed from the P2P network).
>
>
> Wouldn't this cause disconnects due to misbehavior?
>
> A standard node connecting to a relay node would receive
> blocks/transactions that are not valid in some way and then disconnect.
>
> Have you looked though the official client to find what things are
> considered signs that a peer is hostile?  I assume things like double
> spending checks count as misbehavior and can't be quickly checked by a
> relay node.
>
> Maybe another bit could be assigned in the services field as "relay".
> This means that the node doesn't do any checking.
>
> Connects to relay nodes could be command line/config file only.  Peers
> wouldn't connect to them.

> No, the transactions relayed are piped through a bitcoind first (ie
> fully verified by a bitcoind). For blocks, for which the timing needs to
> be tighter, bitcoinj does SPV-validation. Though it is possible to
> create a block which passes SPV validation but causes a DoS score, doing
> so would cost a miner a full block's worth of profits, which they are
> fairly unlikely to do. In any case, if it every becomes a problem, its
> not hard to adapt addnode to allow higher DoS scores for individual nodes.
>
> Matt
>
> On 11/06/13 07:25, Tier Nolan wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 5:50 AM, Matt Corallo <bitcoin-list@bluematt•me
> > <mailto:bitcoin-list@bluematt.me>> wrote:
> >
> >     Relay node details:
> >      * The relay nodes do some data verification to prevent DoS, but in
> >     order to keep relay fast, they do not fully verify the data they are
> >     relaying, thus YOU SHOULD NEVER mine a block building on top of a
> >     relayed block without fully checking it with your own bitcoin
> validator
> >     (as you would any other block relayed from the P2P network).
> >
> >
> > Wouldn't this cause disconnects due to misbehavior?
> >
> > A standard node connecting to a relay node would receive
> > blocks/transactions that are not valid in some way and then disconnect.
> >
> > Have you looked though the official client to find what things are
> > considered signs that a peer is hostile?  I assume things like double
> > spending checks count as misbehavior and can't be quickly checked by a
> > relay node.
> >
> > Maybe another bit could be assigned in the services field as "relay".
> > This means that the node doesn't do any checking.
> >
> > Connects to relay nodes could be command line/config file only.  Peers
> > wouldn't connect to them.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers
> Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models.
> Explore
> techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the most
> from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and
> register
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60136231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
> _______________________________________________
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> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge•net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>

> To peer with the public relay nodes, simply select the closest region
> out of us-west (West Coast US), us-east (East Coast US), eu (Western
> Europe), au (Australia), or jpy (Japan) and add
> public.REGION.relay.mattcorallo.com to your addnode list. Note that
> since all of the relay nodes will relay between each other, you gain no
> latency advantage by peering with more than the closest node to you (and
> currently all the regions map to one node, so there they're redundant
> anyway).
>
> For each relay node, you can connect to either port 8334 or 8335.
> Connecting on port 8334 will relay only blocks, and port 8335 will relay
> both blocks and transactions. The relay nodes will request any
> transactions which appear in your invs no matter which port you connect to.

> I took a brief look at the code - it's looking very reasonable. You can
> replace any construct like
>
> try {
>   Thread.sleep(1000);
> } catch (InterruptedException e) {
>   throw new RuntimeException(e);
> }
>
> which is quite verbose, just with
> Uninterruptibles.sleepUninterruptably(1000, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS); (and
> of course static imports help too)

>
> I think for this concept to take off, you'd need a website and to
> recruit someone to help you market it. Pool operators won't reach out to
> you.

>
> I still find it perhaps more elegant to just boost the connectivity of
> the existing network with bitcoind changes, but this can help for now.

> You should split the block-only and block+tx not only by port
> number, but also by DNS address. DoS attack by flooding blocks is
> fundamentally more difficult than DoS attack by flooding
> transctions, so doing the split by IP address ensures that in the
> event of an attack the more important block relaying functionality
> is less likely to be damaged. In the meantime point both DNS
> addresses to the same IP until it becomes an issue.
>
>

> Recently, there has been a reasonable amount of discussion about the
> continued fragility of the public Bitcoin network on IRC and elsewhere
> (1). To this extent, I'm organizing a system of peering between nodes in
> the network by creating a system of high-speed relay nodes for miners
> and merchants/exchanges. This system will a) act as a fallback in the
> case that the public Bitcoin network encounters issues and b) decrease
> block propagation times between miners.
> It is NOT designed to in any way replace or decrease the need for the
> public Bitcoin P2P network. It is NOT any kind of attempt at
> centralization, and I still encourage interested parties to establish
> their own private peering agreements with large miners as needed.
>
> Currently the network consists of one specially-designed relay node, but
> I hope to bring more online in the coming days.
>
> This network is open to everyone via a few public relay nodes, but also
> will have nodes which are made available only to large miners and
> merchants/exchanges to mitigate the ability of malicious parties to DoS
> the network.
>
> To peer with the public relay nodes, simply select the closest region
> out of us-west (West Coast US), us-east (East Coast US), eu (Western
> Europe), au (Australia), or jpy (Japan) and add
> public.REGION.relay.mattcorallo.com to your addnode list. Note that
> since all of the relay nodes will relay between each other, you gain no
> latency advantage by peering with more than the closest node to you (and
> currently all the regions map to one node, so there they're redundant
> anyway).
>
> For each relay node, you can connect to either port 8334 or 8335.
> Connecting on port 8334 will relay only blocks, and port 8335 will relay
> both blocks and transactions. The relay nodes will request any
> transactions which appear in your invs no matter which port you connect to.
>
> Relay node details:
>  * The relay nodes do some data verification to prevent DoS, but in
> order to keep relay fast, they do not fully verify the data they are
> relaying, thus YOU SHOULD NEVER mine a block building on top of a
> relayed block without fully checking it with your own bitcoin validator
> (as you would any other block relayed from the P2P network).
>  * The relay nodes do not follow the standard inv-getdata-tx/block flow,
> but instead relay transactions/blocks immediately after they have done
> their cursory verification. They do keep some track of whether or not
> your nodes claim to have seen the transactions/blocks before relaying,
> but you may see transactions/blocks being sent which you already have
> and have not requested, if this is a problem for you due to bandwith
> issues, you should reconsider your bandwith constraints and/or are
> peering with too many nodes.
>  * The relay nodes will all relay among themselves very quickly, so
> there is no advantage to peering with as many relay nodes as you can
> find, in fact, the increased incoming bandwidth during block relay
> spikes may result in higher latency for your nodes.
>  * The relay nodes are NOT designed to ensure that you never miss data,
> and may fail to relay some transactions. Additionally, because the relay
> nodes do not respond to standard getdata requests, if you miss a relay
> and then reconnect, that data will not be sent again by the relay nodes.
> The relay nodes are NOT a replacement for having peers on the standard
> P2P network, they are only there to augment the existing P2P network.
>
> If you are a merchant/exchange/large miner/other important node operator
> and wish to gain access to additional domain names which map to relay
> nodes with fewer peers, please fill out the form at
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UL82QdcXXEhZwSHJAK04Sk_cWg4zLOu8a216nO7Mt8c/viewform
>
> You can find the source for the relay nodes at
> https://github.com/TheBlueMatt/RelayNode
>
> If you have any comments/concerns/suggestions, please do not hesitate to
> email bitcoin-peering@mattcorallo•com
>
> Thanks,
> Matt
>
>
> (1) There has been extended discussion on #bitcoin-wizards as well as
> #bitcoin-dev of the very small number of active, listening nodes.
> Additionally, because many of those nodes are versions prior to 0.8.4,
> it seems very likely that maliciously creating network splits or at
> least drastically reducing the number of peers for most nodes would not
> be particularly challenging in the current network. Also,
> http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23fc0/P2P2013_041.pdf
> noted that they were able to single-handledly decrease the network-wide
> orphan rate by around 50% by improving network peering. Finally, you've
> all seen the recent discussion on malicious mining algorithms. Though
> those are not entirely prevented by reducing block propagation times,
> they can be significantly limited compared to the current, rather
> disjoint, network.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers
> Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models. Explore
> techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the most
> from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register
> http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60136231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge•net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>