My full node has been completely synced for a while, but it never shows anything different that "8+0 connections". What do those numbers mean? Shouldn't they increase over time?
2 Answers
8 is the number of peers that you are connected to. 0 is the number of peers that are connected to you. if you want to allow others to connect to you, you need to open port 18080 on your firewall/router.
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3Is there some consequence of having 0 peers connected to my node? I mean, doesn't that mean my node is only leaching? And for instance, if it is mining and finds a block, will the network know about it?– user141Commented Oct 3, 2016 at 17:52
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5It's less useful for the network, as new peers can't connect to you to sync their blockchain. However, if you connect to a new peer, they will then be able to sync off you, but the likelihood is much less. If you're mining, the network will know about your block (but less fast). Commented Oct 3, 2016 at 19:24
You can set the number of your daemon outgoing peers (ie, peers it connects to) with the command line parameter --out-peers. The default is 8.
For having incoming peers, you need to open up your firewall for your daemon's p2p port. This port is typically 18080 but can be customized with the --p2p-bind-port. I think you cannot limit the number of incoming connections.
