Polkadot Report Cal. Week 47 - 2024 #

General Information #

The following results show measurement data that were collected in calendar week 47 in 2024 from 2024-11-18 to 2024-11-25.

• Number of crawls: 335

  The number of crawls executed during the week indicated above.

• Number of visits: 6,833,455

  Every attempt to dial or connect to a peer counts as a visit. Regardless of errors that may occur. We visit peers many times during a given week to extract information from them or probe for their uptime. We visit all peers that we discover in the DHT and peers that we found to be still online from the previous week.

• Number of unique peer IDs discovered in the DHT: 10,651

  The total number of unique peers that our crawler learned about from other peers over the period of the given week and attempted to dial or connect to (visit). This is not the total number of Peer IDs that existed simultaneously in the network at any point during the week. It is the aggregate over the entire week.

• Number of unique IP addresses discovered: 12,770

  The total number of unique IP addresses that the discovered peers advertised to the DHT network within the given week. IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are included in this number even if they address the same peer. This is not the total number of unique IP addresses that participated in the DHT simultaneously at any given point in time. It is the aggregate over the entire week.

• Network Size: 7,980.9940298507462687

  The average number of peers that were found simultaneously (i.e., throughout the duration of one crawl) connected to the network. This number signifies the average network size from all crawls, during the given week.

Timestamps are in UTC if not mentioned otherwise.

Agents #

Agent Distribution #

This bar chart represents the distribution of various user agents within the Ethereum discv5 DHT. Each bar corresponds to a different user agent or client type and indicates its relative prevalence within the network for the given reporting period. The chart provides a snapshot of how different Ethereum clients are being utilized in the network’s decentralized infrastructure.

This stacked plot shows the distribution of various user agents over time.

This chart presents the version distribution for all major user agents, with each bar representing the average number of online peers over the course of a week.

This stacked chart illustrates how the distribution of agent versions for all key user agents evolves over time. It offers insights into the uptake of newer versions among these agents.

Churn Analysis #

This visualizes the uptime of peers over a specific period of time. The plot may display trends in churn rate, distribution of uptime periods, or patterns in peer activity. It helps analyze the stability and reliability of the network by identifying fluctuations in peer participation and examining potential factors influencing churn.

💡 Due to the diversity of Polkadot agents and agent versions, we’ve only included agents that have more than 50 peers.

Geolocation #

Geographical data is sourced from the MaxMind database, which maps IP addresses to corresponding countries.

This bar plot illustrates the distribution of observed nodes across different countries.

This plot displays the weekly geographical distribution of nodes, categorized by country.

Cloud Providers #

Cloud providers data is sourced from Udger, which maps IP addresses to known hosting providers.

Cloud Hosting Rate #

This line chart displays the count of nodes within the Polkadot network that are hosted on known commercial cloud providers, compared to those that are not. It tracks the distribution over a specified period, offering insights into the infrastructure preferences for node hosting.

Regular analysis of this chart can reveal trends in the adoption of cloud services for nodes. Such information is crucial for understanding the network’s resilience and the potential reliance on cloud infrastructure.

This bar chart presents the weekly distribution of Polkadot nodes among various cloud providers, including nodes not hosted within data centers (grouped under Non-Datacenter).

The line chart illustrates the trends in the distribution of all Polkadot nodes across cloud providers over the given time period. Note that nodes hosted outside of data centers are not included in this representation.

Crawls #

Protocols #

This plot illustrates the evolving count of nodes supporting each of the listed protocols over time. It exclusively presents data gathered from nodes accessible through a libp2p connection via our crawler. The identification of supported protocols relies on the libp2p identify protocol, hence necessitating a libp2p connection for discovery.

Errors #

Stale Peer Records #

This stacked plot depicts the count of peer records stored within each node’s routing table and made accessible through the DHT. These peer records are used to discover new remote peers within the network, enabling efficient and secure routing towards the target peer or content

Ensuring the reachability of referenced peers shared within the network holds paramount importance. The plot delineates the occurrences of reachable and non-reachable (stale) peer records. Note that nodes running behind a NAT are counted as unreachable even though they may be online.

For instance, if a peer’s record is present in the routing tables of 100 other nodes and the peer is reachable, the plot will reflect an increase of 100 in the online category.