dash/doc/reduce-traffic.md
Wladimir J. van der Laan 3cb8293ba5
Merge #15990: Add tests and documentation for blocksonly
fa8ced32a60dea37ac169241cf9a1f708ef46c4b doc: Mention blocksonly in reduce-traffic.md, unhide option (MarcoFalke)
fa320de79faaca2b088fcbe7f76701faa9bff236 test: Add test for p2p_blocksonly (MarcoFalke)
fa3872e7b4540857261aed948b94b6b2bfdbc3d1 test: Format predicate source as multiline on error (MarcoFalke)
fa1dce7329d3e74d46ab98b93772b1832a3f1819 net: Rename ::fRelayTxes to ::g_relay_txes (MarcoFalke)

Pull request description:

  This is de-facto no longer hidden

ACKs for commit fa8ced:
  jamesob:
    utACK fa8ced32a6

Tree-SHA512: 474fbdee6cbd035ed9068a066b6056c1f909ec7520be0417820fcd1672ab3069b53f55c5147968978d9258fd3a3933fe1a9ef8e4f6e14fb6ebbd79701a0a1245
2021-07-21 15:53:38 -05:00

51 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown

Reduce Traffic
==============
Some node operators need to deal with bandwidth caps imposed by their ISPs.
By default, Dash Core allows up to 125 connections to different peers, 8 of
which are outbound. You can therefore, have at most 117 inbound connections.
The default settings can result in relatively significant traffic consumption.
Ways to reduce traffic:
## 1. Use `-maxuploadtarget=<MiB per day>`
A major component of the traffic is caused by serving historic blocks to other nodes
during the initial blocks download phase (syncing up a new node).
This option can be specified in MiB per day and is turned off by default.
This is *not* a hard limit; only a threshold to minimize the outbound
traffic. When the limit is about to be reached, the uploaded data is cut by no
longer serving historic blocks (blocks older than one week).
Keep in mind that new nodes require other nodes that are willing to serve
historic blocks.
Whitelisted peers will never be disconnected, although their traffic counts for
calculating the target.
## 2. Disable "listening" (`-listen=0`)
Disabling listening will result in fewer nodes connected (remember the maximum of 8
outbound peers). Fewer nodes will result in less traffic usage as you are relaying
blocks and transactions to fewer nodes.
## 3. Reduce maximum connections (`-maxconnections=<num>`)
Reducing the maximum connected nodes to a minimum could be desirable if traffic
limits are tiny. Keep in mind that dash's trustless model works best if you are
connected to a handful of nodes.
## 4. Turn off transaction relay (`-blocksonly`)
Forwarding transactions to peers increases the P2P traffic. To only sync blocks
with other peers, you can disable transaction relay.
Be reminded of the effects of this setting.
- Fee estimation will no longer work.
- Not relaying other's transactions could hurt your privacy if used while a
wallet is loaded or if you use the node to broadcast transactions.
- It makes block propagation slower because compact block relay can only be
used when transaction relay is enabled.