Lotus Bootstrap Node

A bootstrap node is a network entrypoint for clients without any existing peer information

Pretext

Joining the Filecoin network requires knowledge of existing peers in the network. On startup Lotus, as well as other implementations, attempt to retrieve peer information from a known set of bootstrap nodes.

At present, these known bootstrap nodes are included in Lotus releases, but the list is also configurable at runtime.

Lotus is currently the only known filecoin implementation offering bootstrap functionality.

Motivation

Without bootstrap nodes, it would be impossible to join the network, hence they are invaluable to network health.

There is currently no monetary gain in running a bootstrap node.

Requirements

While it’s possible to synchronise a Lotus node with relatively low resources, and operate a bootstrap node with marginally more resources, it’s important to ensure that a bootstrap node is able to stay synchronised with the network while also serving an unpredictable number of bootstrap requests.

We currently run bootstrap nodes on the following hardware

  • Intel Xeon Platinum 8175M CPU @ 2.50GHz
  • 32Gb Memory
  • 5Mbps download speed, 2Mbps upload speed
  • 2Ti SSD storage for chain state storage

It’s possible to reliably synchronise a bootstrap node with as few as 3 cores and 5Gb real memory, but you will need to monitor resource usage closely in periods of high demand, and account for additional disk space for virtual memory.

To demonstrate the resource requirements of a bootstrap node, see the last 7 days (ATOW) cpu and memory profile of one (out of 9) bootstrap nodes on the network.

7 Day CPU core usage profile
7 Day CPU profile
7 Day Memory profile
7 Day Memory profile

Configuration

We recommend the following configuration to be specified for running a bootstrap node.

  [API]
    ListenAddress = "/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/1234/http"
  [Libp2p]
    ListenAddresses = ["/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/1347"]
    ConnMgrLow = 400
    ConnMgrHigh = 500
    ConnMgrGrace = "5m0s"
  [Pubsub]
    Bootstrapper = true
    IPColocationWhitelist = ["10.0.0.0/8"]

Lotus API’s ListenAddress should be a multiaddress which allows Lotus to listen on the desired interface, e.g. 0.0.0.0 for all ipv4 addresses on this host.

Libp2p’s ListenAddresses should be configures similarly.

Given the traffic demands of a bootstrap node, we recommend tuning the connection parameters to a less aggressive threshold, allowing 400-500 connections with a connection timeout of 5 minutes.

If you intend to run a bootstrap node behind a reverse proxy or load balancer, you will need to configure IPColocationWhitelist to cover your IPs. This is because libp2p currently does not support proxy protocol, therefore all peers will register as the reverse proxy/load balancer address, causing peer penalties to be inccorectly applied (see gossipsub-v1.1.md).

Unlisted bootstrap nodes

Bootstrapper nodes will automatically bootstrap with known bootstrappers. If you are operating your own infrastructure, you may want to manually connect your bootstrap nodes to each other.

lotus net peers
lotus net connect <peer_multiaddr>

Configure lotus daemons to connect to this bootstrapper.

Lotus bootstrappers are built in at compile time. You can find the list of public bootstrapper nodes for each network here. This list can be overridden by adding the following to your daemon config file.

[Libp2p]
    BootstrapPeers = [
      "<multiaddr>"
    ]

For prospective operators

If you’re running a bootstrap node, and wish to join the known bootstrap nodes list, please get in touch over filecoin slack.

Edit this page on GitHub

← Lotus Gateway
Manage FIL →