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Topic: exactly how does a node find its first connection (Read 495 times)

hero member
Activity: 1106
Merit: 521
Great info guys, thank you just what i was looking....... Grin
legendary
Activity: 883
Merit: 1005
cool I suspected the nodes listed in the client only relayed other known nodes and didn't bother with anything else; had to google DNS seed. Smiley
staff
Activity: 3458
Merit: 6793
Just writing some code
The program comes with a list of large stable nodes
My understanding is the list is long and it includes very stable old nodes that hardly ever go down.
Actually that is the last resort.

This is specific for Bitcoin Core, it may be different for other nodes.
First the node checks for its own list of peers that it has built. If it is a new node, that list won't exist.
Then it will check with several DNS seeds, servers which provide a list of nodes. Those DNS seeds are hard coded into the client.
If for some reason the DNS seeds aren't reachable, then it resorts to its own internal hard coded list of seed nodes. Those seed nodes are nodes which have had a super high uptime so it is likely that the node will be able to connect to those.
legendary
Activity: 883
Merit: 1005
The program comes with a list of large stable nodes
My understanding is the list is long and it includes very stable old nodes that hardly ever go down.
hero member
Activity: 1106
Merit: 521
Just wondering what is actually happening in the background as bitcoin core is searching for its first node, where is it looking? i know there is no central server that it connects to so how does it find that 1st one?
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