05/16/2018

Aphelion Improves Peering Logic for NEO Blockchain

As part of our ongoing initiatives to improve the NEO ecosystem and contribute to building a smart economy, Aphelion is actively issuing pull requests in GitHub to improve the performance of the NEO Blockchain. 

Here is one example of a recently merged/approved request.

Pull request #225 - Improve peering logic to ensure a LocalNode stays connected to peers

https://github.com/neo-project/neo/pull/225                                                                                                                     

The request was accepted and merged into the official neo core library.  Prior to the changes being accepted, it was common for nodes to get in a state where they were only connected to several peers. If the few peers a node remained connected to were also poorly connected, the node could fall out of sync from the blockchain for a number of minutes before attempting to connect to more peers.  This often impacted performance. The changes remove potential stalls that could come from trying to connect with peers that are slow to respond. The changes also attempt to ensure there are always a pool of node addresses ready and waiting to connect to as soon as the node disconnects from a peer such that its currently connected peer count falls below the desired amount. 

Ultimately, these changes contribute to a faster and better connected Neo network.