<p>That monitoring page states that it counts hosts from 'addr' messages seen on the bitcoin network. </p>

<p>An 'addr' message contains the IP number &amp; port number of a bitcoin client. Since all bitcoin clients use the same listening port number the IP number is the only information to count by. </p>

<p>When a bitcoin client connects to a peer it does send out an extra number to identify it by. However there is no friendly way to force all clients behind an IP number to connect to you so you cannot capture that number for all those clients.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-03-10T13:03:36.623Z
2012-03-10T13:03:36.623Z
Guest
<p>A Bitcoin client connects to peers and can accept connections from peers.  Is it possible to learn how many nodes exist from a specific IP address?</p>

<p>Specifically, the monitoring service from RowIT ( <a href="http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk" rel="nofollow">http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk</a> ) gives a metric "Total Hosts", but I suspect that if there was more than one host from an IP address, the second and successive hosts would not be counted in the total.</p>

<network><peers><ip-address>
How can the number of peers from the same IP address be counted?
user479
# How can the number of peers from the same IP address be counted?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2012-01-26)

A Bitcoin client connects to peers and can accept connections from peers. Is it possible to learn how many nodes exist from a specific IP address?

Specifically, the monitoring service from RowIT ( <http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk> ) gives a metric "Total Hosts", but I suspect that if there was more than one host from an IP address, the second and successive hosts would not be counted in the total.

**Tags:** network, peers, ip-address


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2012-03-10. Score: 1

That monitoring page states that it counts hosts from 'addr' messages seen on the bitcoin network.

An 'addr' message contains the IP number & port number of a bitcoin client. Since all bitcoin clients use the same listening port number the IP number is the only information to count by.

When a bitcoin client connects to a peer it does send out an extra number to identify it by. However there is no friendly way to force all clients behind an IP number to connect to you so you cannot capture that number for all those clients.


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