In this commit, we move the block height dependency from the links in
the switch to the switch itself. This is possible due to a recent change
on the links no longer depending on the block height to update their
commitment fees.
We'll now only have the switch be alerted of new blocks coming in and
links will retrieve the height from it atomically.
In this commit, we modify the behavior of links updating their
commitment fees. Rather than attempting to update the commitment fee for
each link every time a new block comes in, we'll use a timer with a
random interval between 10 and 60 minutes for each link to determine
when to update their corresponding commitment fee. This prevents us from
oscillating the fee rate for our various commitment transactions.
In this commit, we randomize the order of the different bootstrappers in
order to prevent from always querying potentially unreliable
bootstrappers first.
In this commit, we address an existing issue with regards to the inital
peer bootstrapping stage. At times, the bootstrappers can be unreliable
by providing addresses for peers that no longer exist/are currently
offline. This would lead to nodes quickly entering an exponential
backoff method used to maintain a minimum target of peers without first
achieving said target.
We address this by separating the peer bootstrapper into two stages: the
initial peer bootstrapping and maintaining a target set of nodes to
maintain an up-to-date view of the network. The initial peer
bootstrapping stage has been made aggressive in order to provide such
view of the network as quickly as possible. Once done, we continue on
with the existing exponential backoff method responsible for maintaining
a target set of nodes.
traversal
In this commit, we allow our node to automatically advertise its
connection's external IPs on the ports it is currently listening on in
order to accept inbound connections. This is only done when specifying
a NAT traversal technique when starting the daemon.
We also include a handy method that watches for dynamic IP changes in
the background. If a new IP is detected, we'll craft a new node
announcement using the new IP and broadcast it to the network.
In this commit, we introduce a new package `nat`. This package is
responsible for handling the different techniques for NAT traversals.
Specifically, we have implemented UPnP and NAT-PMP support. This will
allow users to easily advertise their nodes to the network as long as
their devices are behind a single NAT. Devices behind multiple NATs are
not supported.
