BUIP014: Testing a BU X-Relay Network for Miners in China

solex

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Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
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Testing a Bitcoin Unlimited X-Relay Network for miners in mainland China



Donation address

36XTMVtgJqqNYymsSvRonpUsbZRGkm1jvX

Summary

This Operational BUIP is to support the initiative to build and test Chinese mainland-based nodes for an alternative to the existing Relay Network. Every BU v0.12 node has Xtreme Thinblocks & Xpress Validation enabled by default and while nodes can connect in a random fashion for multi-hop traffic, they can also be deliberately connected to optimize for single-hop traffic. This is important for routing newly mined blocks between the major miners, particularly so for miners which are on two sides of the Great Firewall.

Phase I: Deployment

Setup of two nodes on hosting providers in different cities, ideally where large hashing facilities operate.

Phase II: Testing

node-to-node performance statistics
a) within the firewall
b) through the firewall

Donations

BUIP014 will not be having a conventional membership vote. Its adoption stands or falls on the level of donations it attracts. If members and guests decide that the project benefits the decentralisation and growth of Bitcoin then funds are welcomed!
Thanks to @Peter R for proposing this project.

Unused funds will be returned to donors on a pro-rata basis, or rolled forward for the next project if the donor agrees,

Architecture

The X-Relay Network is to be detailed

Overview

By Peter Rizun


Improving Block Propagation through the Great Firewall of China with X-technology
A Bitcoin Unlimited Initiative

The release of Xtreme Thin Blocks and Xpress Validation in Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) 0.12 has provided new opportunities to significantly improve the propagation of blocks across Bitcoin's peer-to-peer network. @Peter Tschipper's X-technology leverages the fact that most transactions included in a solved block are already known by most network nodes (common mempools). Rather than requesting the solved block verbatim, the receiving node images its mempool onto a Bloom filter that its sends with its get-data request. The transmitting node sends the block contents by hash for all the transactions imaged onto the Bloom filter, and in full otherwise. Empirical testing shows that this technique reduces the total number of bytes transmitted by a factor of 15X under normal operating conditions.

Nowhere is the efficient propagation of blocks more important than across the Great Firewall of China (GFC). For example, experiments in the fall of 2015 by @jtoomim showed that although 4MB blocks could often be communicated and verified in 7 seconds (per hop), when the block had to penetrate the GFC, this figure increased to between 15 to 150 seconds. Indeed, the difficulty in propagating blocks through the GFC is arguably one of the most significant bottlenecks to on-chain scaling.

The goal of this project is to setup and maintain a small network of BU nodes across the world, with a particular focus on setting up nodes inside and outside of mainland China, and to perform experiments to quantify the improvements that X-technology permits. We suspect that the average amount of time required to communicate each megabyte of block information can be dramatically reduced. Should the results be positive, this small network of BU nodes could grow into an "Xtreme Relay Network," eventually replacing the centralized and less-robust Fast Relay Network, and permitting an order-of-magntitude or greater increase in Bitcoin's transactional throughput.

If you would like to contribute to this initiative, please consider donating to the project's wallet at 36XTMVtgJqqNYymsSvRonpUsbZRGkm1jvX. All funds are administered by theZerg, Peter R & solex, in accordance with Article 3 of Bitcoin Unlimited's Articles of Federation.
 
Last edited:

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,995
i donate 1BTC

if i can get it to go thru ;)

edit: awaiting confirmation...
 

solex

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
1,558
4,693
Wow! thanks @cypherdoc and @Peter R
I am adding 0.25 for this.

Also, now adding the note that unused funds will be refunded to the donor on a pro-rata basis, unless they are happy to have the remainder rolled forward into the next project.
 
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solex

Moderator
Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
1,558
4,693
Thanks all.

@jtoomim mentioned two cities where a lot of hash-power is located. We should see whether we can get those locations via a reputable provider.

Need to confirm the 2nd

@Peter R
Aliyun is where most bitcoin stuff is. Aliyun Beijing in particular has a lot of mining stuff in it. I think either Qingdao or Hangzhou has a lot of hashrate too, but I've forgotten which.

https://www.aliyun.com/?lang=en

Other options:

http://www.qcloud.com/

http://www.chinanetcloud.com/sites/default/files/Clouds in China_en.pdf
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,995
@solex consult with @Jihan about where to locate them. He was here earlier.
 

jtoomim

Active Member
Jan 2, 2016
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Aliyun Beijing is one of the locations. The other location I had in mind as being a DC with a large pool's servers was also an Aliyun datacenter, but I can't remember if it was Hangzhou or Qingdao. Shanghai would also be a reasonable choice. I don't know where BW.com's servers are, but I could ask.
 

jtoomim

Active Member
Jan 2, 2016
130
253
Aliyun Hangzhou would have the best performance, according to Wugang on WeChat. It could also be helpful to have a node in Sichuan province or Inner Mongolia, where there are a lot of mining farms. Most of those farms use mining pools, though, and don't solo mine. I know Bitmain in particular has a mining pool in Sichuan that they've had some connectivity problems with, so maybe setting up a node in Chengdu would be helpful. If you do, make sure to let me know the IP address and I'll make sure it gets passed along to Kevin Pan.

Edit: I just noticed the contextual implication and wanted to edit to clarify. Hangzhou is probably not where BW.com is, but I think it's where another pool has its servers. That pool might want me to avoid naming them for security reasons, so I'm being a bit vague.
 
Last edited:

Peter R

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
1,398
5,595
Since the new thin blocks are called "Xtreme thin" blocks (Xthin), and the faster validation method is called "Xpress validation," what if we pick a name that starts with X for the new block relay we're starting to build? Rather than "Hyper Relay," I propose the "Block Xccelerator."

Haha maybe not, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,995
Xpress Relay
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,995
i agree:

XThins
XValids
XRelay
 
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