If IRC went down right now, would it negatively impact the Bitcoin economy and reduce prices?
No. At the very most it could induce some connectivity problems, which isn't very likely, given that IRC is just one of many mechanisms for peer discovery.
Topic: What would happen if the IRC went down? (Read 1180 times)
No. At the very most it could induce some connectivity problems, which isn't very likely, given that IRC is just one of many mechanisms for peer discovery.
If IRC went down right now, would it negatively impact the Bitcoin economy and reduce prices?
There is an internal fallback list, as well as a history list after the first connection. Connected peers can also share the addresses of peers that it is aware of as well.
I know that in addition to IRC, it uses DNS. Are there any other main methods used (besides IRC and DNS)?
I didn't know bitcoin was based on irc, is it strong enough to survive without it?
Bitcoin is not based upon irc, but there is a channel dedicated to announcing peer addresses so that a new client install can find peers in the network quickly and 'bootstrap' itself. However, the current client uses several parrallel methods of doing this, so that it's not dependent upon the irc channel.
I didn't know bitcoin was based on irc, is it strong enough to survive without it?
I dont use the IRC the other methods are still just as reliable.
is there a way that a user could flood IRC and cause all the bitcoin clients to hang or worse?
All? No. Some, maybe. I don't use IRC at all, personally. It's not necessary anymore, even for a fresh install.
I've asked the same question, don't worry.
There are other 8 ways, from the src code
no idea why this was moved to newbies...
Ok so theres multiple methods...
is there a way that a user could flood IRC and cause all the bitcoin clients to hang or worse?
Ok so theres multiple methods...
is there a way that a user could flood IRC and cause all the bitcoin clients to hang or worse?
Nothing as the link above me shows the client has multiple methods to find peers and more methods could be added to future versions of the client.
H IRC is a "quick and dirty" way to bootstrap the network (get it up and running fast) but there is no reason to continue to use it. It opens up some potential vulnerabilities and there are other methods of finding peers.
H IRC is a "quick and dirty" way to bootstrap the network (get it up and running fast) but there is no reason to continue to use it. It opens up some potential vulnerabilities and there are other methods of finding peers.
A question for the experts at the Bitcoin Stack Exchange:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1292/bitcoin-client-irc-a-potential-network-weak-link
Short answer: it won't be a big problem, since IRC is only one way for the client to find peers.
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/1292/bitcoin-client-irc-a-potential-network-weak-link
Short answer: it won't be a big problem, since IRC is only one way for the client to find peers.
Bitcoin gets its nodes from IP's connected on the IRC irc.lfnet.org...
so what would happen if the IRC were to go down?
so what would happen if the IRC were to go down?
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