Quote from: gmaxwell on June 04, 2014, 05:41:04 PM

Quote from: niniyo on June 04, 2014, 03:43:50 PM

Why do addr messages propagate for nodes who don't accept incoming connections? If you know you're outgoing-only, you should be able to indicate so in your version message, so that the peer doesn't share any information about your IP address to others.

They don't, what you're describing isn't how the Bitcoin protocol works at all.

Other peers don't share information about you, you broadcast it or you don't. If your node is not configured to accept incoming connections (e.g. listen=0), knows its not in sync with the network, or is unable to determine a plausible external IP it won't broadcast an addr message for itself.

My understanding from the paper is that they were able to collect thousands of IP address of "clients" who were doing outbound connections only (apparently 90% of peers). Is this because those client's don't have listen=0 set?

What about SPV nodes on peoples phones - I'm assuming they wouldn't / shouldn't advertise their addresses?

So to rephrase my question - why are so many nodes advertising their IP addresses if they can't accept incoming connections?