nwaku/docs/operators/how-to/connect.md

2.4 KiB

Connect to other peers

Note that this tutorial describes how to configure a node to connect to other peers before running the node. For connecting a running node to existing peers, see the JSON-RPC API.

There are currently three options. Note that each of these options can be used in combination with any of the other two. In other words, it is possible to configure a node to connect to a static list of peers and to discover such peer lists using DNS discovery and discover and connect to random peers using discovery v5 with a bootstrap node.

Option 1: Configure peers statically

Static peers can be provided to a nwaku node on startup using the --staticnode CLI parameter. The --staticnode option can be repeated for each peer you want to connect to on startup.

./build/wakunode2 \
  --staticnode:<libp2p-multiaddr-peer1> \
  --staticnode:<libp2p-multiaddr-peer2>

As an example, consider a nwaku node that connects to two known peers on the same local host (with IP 0.0.0.0) with TCP ports 60002 and 60003, and peer IDs 16Uiu2HAkzjwwgEAXfeGNMKFPSpc6vGBRqCdTLG5q3Gmk2v4pQw7H and 16Uiu2HAmFBA7LGtwY5WVVikdmXVo3cKLqkmvVtuDu63fe8safeQJ respectively.

./build/wakunode2 \
  --staticnode:/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/60002/p2p/16Uiu2HAkzjwwgEAXfeGNMKFPSpc6vGBRqCdTLG5q3Gmk2v4pQw7H \
  --staticnode:/ip4/0.0.0.0/tcp/60003/p2p/16Uiu2HAmFBA7LGtwY5WVVikdmXVo3cKLqkmvVtuDu63fe8safeQJ

Option 2: Discover peers using DNS discovery

A node can discover other nodes to connect to using DNS-based discovery. For a quickstart guide on how to configure DNS discovery, see this tutorial. There is also a more comprehensive tutorial for advanced users.

Option 3: Discover peers using Waku Discovery v5

Enable Discovery v5 using the --discv5-discovery option.

It is possible to configure bootstrap entries for the Discovery v5 routing table using the --discv5-bootstrap-node option repeatedly.

./build/wakunode2 \
  --discv5-discovery:true \
  --discv5-bootstrap-node:<discv5-enr-bootstrap-entry1> \
  --discv5-bootstrap-node:<discv5-enr-bootstrap-entry2>

Note that if Discovery v5 is enabled and used in conjunction with DNS-based discovery, the nwaku node will attempt to bootstrap the Discovery v5 routing table with ENRs extracted from the peers discovered via DNS.