Topic: Initial blockchain download (Read 6480 times)
The times you've given are pretty much what would be expected if you are processing the chain as fast as you can get it, actually. Maybe 16 hours is a little high but 8 hours sounds about right. The hard part of the initial sync is building the database. Yes, if you get a stuck peer it can get really slow or not much will happen, but you aren't going to be network limited at any point.
I can see that, yes. However in my case I certainly wasn't CPU bound, and I certainly wasn't network bound. I can only conclude I was bound by the rate at which the 5 or 8 nodes I was connected to were willing to pass me the blocks.
Most likely you are bound by the poor peer selection.
Initial blockchain download occurs from one peer at a time. If that peer is slow, then your entire blockchain download is slow.
Yes, it's stupid and yes it needs fixing (patches welcome).
The blockchain torrent is a stopgap fix, that works around the find-a-good-peer issue.
I suspect that was my problem. I was behind a firewall, which didn't help either.
I can see that, yes. However in my case I certainly wasn't CPU bound, and I certainly wasn't network bound. I can only conclude I was bound by the rate at which the 5 or 8 nodes I was connected to were willing to pass me the blocks.
Most likely you are bound by the poor peer selection.
Initial blockchain download occurs from one peer at a time. If that peer is slow, then your entire blockchain download is slow.
Yes, it's stupid and yes it needs fixing (patches welcome).
The blockchain torrent is a stopgap fix, that works around the find-a-good-peer issue.
You were actually disk seek bound and the solution is for the bulk of all users to switch to an SPV client. The current clients out there are a little rough and not that well optimised but there should start to be preview releases soon of a multibit that's faster and more stable.
A blockchain torrent was exactly what i was thinking.
A humble suggestion:
Maybe a brand new install of bitcoin-qt should alert the user that there are other, faster options for a blockchain download (if it's not going to automatically take advantage of those faster options itself).
There's actually no guarantee that it will be faster. The main restriction to initial download speed is CPU processing, and with the torrent, you are delaying the begin of CPU work until the torrent is complete.A humble suggestion:
Maybe a brand new install of bitcoin-qt should alert the user that there are other, faster options for a blockchain download (if it's not going to automatically take advantage of those faster options itself).
I can see that, yes. However in my case I certainly wasn't CPU bound, and I certainly wasn't network bound. I can only conclude I was bound by the rate at which the 5 or 8 nodes I was connected to were willing to pass me the blocks.
Going by the speed of the internet link I was on, if I were to max out the link I would have been able to download the blockchain torrent in under 2 hours (assuming it's under 8Gb, which is nearly the size of my blocks directory). Let's say 4 hours to be pessimistic. I don't know how long it would take to process that file, however even if it were an order of magnitude longer than the couple of minutes that bitcoin-qt takes to start up, we're still talking a significant improvement over the 8+ hour time it took. (And looking at the timestamps on the .dat files in my blocks folder, I think it took closer to 16 hours).
Still, I'm not saying that the .torrent should be the default or only option. I'm not even saying it should be built-in to the client (although that would be nice). Simply a warning with a link to the forum thread would have sufficed in my instance.
A blockchain torrent was exactly what i was thinking.
A humble suggestion:
Maybe a brand new install of bitcoin-qt should alert the user that there are other, faster options for a blockchain download (if it's not going to automatically take advantage of those faster options itself).
There's actually no guarantee that it will be faster. The main restriction to initial download speed is CPU processing, and with the torrent, you are delaying the begin of CPU work until the torrent is complete. A humble suggestion:
Maybe a brand new install of bitcoin-qt should alert the user that there are other, faster options for a blockchain download (if it's not going to automatically take advantage of those faster options itself).
A blockchain torrent was exactly what i was thinking.
A humble suggestion:
Maybe a brand new install of bitcoin-qt should alert the user that there are other, faster options for a blockchain download (if it's not going to automatically take advantage of those faster options itself).
A humble suggestion:
Maybe a brand new install of bitcoin-qt should alert the user that there are other, faster options for a blockchain download (if it's not going to automatically take advantage of those faster options itself).
Here's the forum topic about the torrent:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-bitcoin-blockchain-data-torrent-145386
You can download bootstrap.dat via http here:
http://eu2.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/
"Version 0.7.1 (when released) will automatically validate and import a file in the bitcoin data directory named "bootstrap.dat". Version 0.7 or later will also import this file by passing the command line argument "-loadblock=/path/to/bootstrap.dat" to bitcoin-qt or bitcoind."
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-bitcoin-blockchain-data-torrent-145386
You can download bootstrap.dat via http here:
http://eu2.bitcoincharts.com/blockchain/
"Version 0.7.1 (when released) will automatically validate and import a file in the bitcoin data directory named "bootstrap.dat". Version 0.7 or later will also import this file by passing the command line argument "-loadblock=/path/to/bootstrap.dat" to bitcoin-qt or bitcoind."
Press "Bitcoin Forum" up there ↖
Type "torrent" into the search box up there ↗
Type "torrent" into the search box up there ↗
As someone who just installed the bitcoin-qt client an waited over 8 hours for the block chain download (after 8 hours I was still more than 6 months behind) I was wondering what kind of solutions are in the works for this?
Jump to: