[tahoe-dev] Introducer request period

[Brian Warner]

On 7/29/10 11:04 PM, eurekafag wrote:
> I've noticed that NAT'ed nodes require a lot of time to connect to a
> new node with external IP. Something between 20 mins and an hour.
> Where can I set introducer request period to make it faster? Node with
> external IP can't connect to one behind the NAT so the revconnect
> required and that NAT'ed node has to know new IP but it requests too
> rarely. About 5-10 mins would be nice.


Huh, that ought to be immediate, as long as your NAT'ed node was already
connected to the introducer. There are no periodic updates; everything
is broadcast out as soon as it arrives. The moment the new (external IP)
node connects to the Introducer, it will publish its connection-info,
whereupon the info will immediately be sent to all subscribers (i.e.
your NAT'ed node). The moment the info arrives at your NAT'ed node, it
will attempt to connect.

The only timer we have is on reconnection attempts: when your NAT'ed
node had lost its connection to the introducer, it waits a little bit
and then reconnects, and the delay grows with each successive failed
attempt (random exponential backoff), capped at one hour. So if you've
been offline for a while, your node may take up to an hour to try
reconnecting to anyone. Similarly, if your NAT'ed node is unable to
connect to the external node, it will try again after a random delay.

Is it possible that you didn't have good connectivity from your NAT'ed
node to the external node for the first 10 or 20 minutes? Given the way
the backoff algorithm works, if you were offline for 10 minutes, you
should expect to see it remain disconnected for another 10-20 minutes
longer (the backoff roughly doubles each time).

cheers,
 -Brian