Running a Bitcoin node (behind Firewall / NAT or anything else? disallowing inbound connections)

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I consider running a bitcoin full node on a raspberry Pi 3. I want to attach the raspberry Pi into my home-network (wifi). When I check my IP address I have a public address to the outside (which is changing from time to time, however is only one of 5 different addresses) and via NAT given by my ISP. I don't know what is between "my" public IP and my homenetwork in detail.

As I understand it correctly a bitcoin node does only good to the overall network iff it can accept inbound connections, therefore my raspberry pi must be publicly available (behind all this NAT whatever). If I run a bitcoin node I would like to use it at least by myself as a trusted node inside my mobile bitcoin wallet...

In the end I see two ways to do that:

  • Resolve NAT issues with one of the following techniques: Upnp, TURN, NAT hole punching, STUN, ICE, IGDP, NAT-PMP, PCP, ALG, wathever else there, I don't know...
  • Or running a hidden service.

So my question:

  • Is it good/bad/ok to "only" allow inbound connections as a tor hidden service?
  • Is there an easy way to get a bitcoin node with "traditional" means available as a public node inside a home network?

Stefan

Posted 2016-10-23T19:11:26.710

Reputation: 345

Answers

1

You may wish to attempt the following: Your router most likely offers you a GUI so you can adjust a few settings. Use your browser to connect to your router whose ip address is something like 192.168.0.1. This will bring the GUI to your browser (you will need to find out the login details giving you access). Once you are connected to your router, there is probably a section called 'advanced settings'. Within that section, you may see a subsection called 'DHCP reservation' which should allow you to choose a fixed internal ip address for your raspberry. Once you have done that, go back to advanced settings and find a subsection called 'port forwarding`. This will allow you to instruct your router to forward any connection attempt on port 8333 to your fixed ip address.

In fact, I have just been paraphrasing bitcoin.org

Sven Williamson

Posted 2016-10-23T19:11:26.710

Reputation: 1 314

This sounds very logical to me! And might work in some cases, however is this a general solution? Could an ISP have something in place, which won't allow such a thing! My guess is, that behind a single public IP address an ISP is hiding several customers. In that case one has to deal with double NAT (NAT-over-NAT)? I will try if this works in my specific case, still I think this is not a general solution. – Stefan – 2016-10-23T19:48:04.147

I have added the the link to the masters themselves. All I got is from them – Sven Williamson – 2016-10-23T19:50:17.903

Asked: 2016-10-23T19:11:26.710

Viewed: 1 766 times

Active: 2017-01-22T00:27:48.257