I have a bunch of spare computers lying around at home and have currently got each of them running a full node. Does this benefit the network more than running a full node on one computer only?
1 Answer
It's even harming the network, since every full node will be synching the whole blockchain from other nodes and using their bandwidth without giving more back to the network than one full node at this location would do alone.
However for one location, there are several possibilities, which differ a little bit from each other:
- Home internet access provides probably very little upload speeds at most locations, so each node will sharing very little with other nodes but still synching the whole blockchain from them.
- VPS or Cloud servers at one location like Amazon AWS can make sense, since they have a very good outbound connection and each one with a small CPU/memory config can reach its limits. Also recommended as remote node for privacy concerned users who want to run an own node but their home connectivity doesn't allow them due to bandwidth limits.
- Dedicated servers hosted in the same datacenter are still very helpful for the network, since they have mostly a good connectivity and a lot of bandwidth and hardware resources. In most cases they will be operated by different people what decentralises the control and distribution of the blockchain.
So no, several full nodes at one location sharing the same internet connectivity and controlled by one and the same person are no benefit for the network. At home the best solution is probably to run one energy savvy device like a RaspPi or similar for a full node and connect all other devices to this node.
