P2P configuration

Staking & Delegation Operate a Stake Pool
1

I’m setting up a new relay and am using P2P for the topology. I have a few questions to make sure my configuration is meeting best practices.

  • In my topology.json config, for local roots I am including only the Block Producer node, since I assume my P2P connections are adequate for keeping my relay up-to-date on chain activity. I’ve read some forum posts, which suggest including other relay nodes in the local roots section. Is this overkill, since it feels like the main thing is making sure the relay can send/receive to the BP node?
  • When looking at gLiveView, I notice that Incoming Connection count is 1, which is my BP node. The peer connections look good. Since I have not run the topology updater script yet, I’m assuming the incoming count will match the number of nodes set up in the local roots section of the topology file. Is this a good assumption?
    Screenshot from 2023-12-17 10-44-33
  • I’ve kicked off the topology updater script to publish/advertise my relay. I assume this is a best practice, so that relays in non-p2p can find and include connection to my relay in their topology file. Is this what others are doing? Once this publishing has been confirmed, then I expect my Incoming connection count to rise.

Thanks much!

1 Like
2

Yes, it can take a while to get incoming peers on p2p. Advertising on the topology updater is good, but your discover for other p2p nodes comes from your pool cert info. It can take a while for new peers to come through, as if your pool isn’t minting blocks other p2p nodes don’t seem to connect to you as often.

What you can also do is get some trusted SPOs to add your relay to their topology to ensure you get a few other incoming connections.

Is this mainnet or a testnet?

1 Like
3

Thanks @jeremyisme . That all makes sense. This is mainnet btw.

I suppose another way to look at is if the P2P connections are working, so the relay keeps current state and broadcasts BP chain data on new block candidates, then the statistic for “Incoming Connections” is not important, as long as you have at least one for the BP node.

Rather than advertising my relay, I could also add additional local roots to my topology file pointing to my other relays. This will give me a some backup assurance in case P2P connections are not working.

4

Regarding your question about whether you should include your own other relays in your local roots section: See my argument against doing that in this other post and also os11k’s argument for doing it.

1 Like
5

Thanks @Terminada . Yeah, I’m feeling good about just using BP in local roots section. If P2P quits working for the relay to get network updates, then this would be totally unexpected and the relay is probably misconfigured.

1 Like