Using LND and it’s been running well for 2-3 months now, with 12 channels that I’ve opened. Payments are being routed but sporadically. I’ve noticed that I also have new peers that found me but they haven’t opened new channels to my node yet. My question is, is there a setting within LND preventing new channels from being opened? Or is it the fact that I have tor enabled for all traffic? Should I disable the option and go full clearnet?
Here’s a snippet from the LND log which leads me to believe that the TOR option should be disabled :
PEER: Peer(xxxxxxxxxxxx): disconnecting yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.onion:9735, reason: read handler closed
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks
Are you actually attempting to open channels with these parties or they with you?
Channel creation between users is a deliberate and intentional process unless you have something like Autopilot enabled in the LND config.
Disconnects from random peers (especially over Tor) is just a fact of life on LN and doesn’t necessarily indicate anything is wrong, just that perhaps a Tor circuit died abruptly, which can happen at any time.
You connect to random peers for getting the latest network gossip about channel states in order to sync the “channel graph” - these aren’t necessarily peers you actually have a channel with.
No the question concerns others connecting with me. I had no problems opening channels to peers. I just noticed a few days ago that 3 peers had connected to me but hadn’t opened a channel. I just wanted to make sure that there was nothing in LNDs config options that prevented them from opening a channel to me.
“You connect to random peers for getting the latest network gossip about channel states in order to sync the “channel graph” - these aren’t necessarily peers you actually have a channel with.”
Knew about the gossip network but didn’t know how that worked. Thanks for that info.
I knew that Tor could be problematic so not too concerned there but now I’m wondering if I should just disable Tor within LND’s config options. I had read that Tor is not recommended for routing nodes, is that true? Think I’d like to keep using Tor unless it does restrict the flow of sats through the node.
What do you think?
Appreciate the help and thanks again for spreading your knowledge.
The people who want to connect with you and make a channel will need their setup to have tor enabled to do so, though I believe this is a default in LND.
At least most nodes should not have an issue connecting to your onion address as long as your and their Tor connections are working fine. Sometimes tor has network issues but they usually resolve themselves after a short time. Did your channel partners complain that they were unable to make a channel with you?
At the moment, LND nodes running StartOS can only be connected to remotely via Tor. In our forthcoming release (v0.4.0), we are adding clearnet abilities and other advanced networking features which will change that, but for now, Tor is the only way for someone to connect inbound to you remotely.