Max and target peer connections.

chainhead

As described in the configuration file here (link below), the node will attempt as many connections as TARGET_PEER_CONNECTIONS and will stop dropping the peers if it reaches the MAX_PEER_CONNECTIONS.

When target is less than max, why would more connection attempts be made? Therefore, what purpose would max connections settings serve?

When target is greater than max, then target will never be achieved because any attempt to reach the target will exceed the max setting. Therefore, how do these settings play out w.r.t. each other?

Link: https://github.com/stellar/stellar-core/blob/master/docs/stellar-core_example.cfg

jed

# TARGET_PEER_CONNECTIONS (Integer) default 8
# This server will send outbound connection attempts until it is at this
#   number of peer connections.
TARGET_PEER_CONNECTIONS=8

# MAX_PEER_CONNECTIONS (Integer) default 12
# This server will start dropping peers if it is above this number of
#  connected peers. The more peers you are connected to the higher
#  the bandwidth requirements
MAX_PEER_CONNECTIONS=12

It drops peers if it has over the MAX

chainhead

I am sorry; that response is same as mentioned in the .cfg file I pasted.

My question is, in a scenario, where TARGET_PEER_CONNECTIONS is less than MAX_PEER_CONNECTIONS if a node has already reached its target number of connections, why would it attempt to connect more (up to a certain max value)?

Conversely, what happens if TARGET_PEER_CONNECTIONS is greater than MAX_PEER_CONNECTIONS? Would the node not launch?

jed

Ah other people can connect to you.

You shouldn't set TARGET_PEER_CONNECTIONS to be greater than MAX_PEER_CONNECTIONS but I don't think this will stop stellar-core from launching.

chainhead

jed

Ah other people can connect to you.

oh, I see, got it.

You shouldn't set TARGET_PEER_CONNECTIONS to be greater than MAX_PEER_CONNECTIONS

Thanks!