<p>There are several hard-coded DNS seeds, which work AFAIK as a DNS round-robin to provide connection to several random nodes.</p>

<p>Once initially connected to nodes, peer discovery is automatic and your node could easily learn about the entire network through just a few connected nodes.</p>

<p>There is a slight chance that a malicious ISP could hijack DNS or for that matter, all Bitcoin traffic, either preventing peer discovery or alternatively providing false or limited results. <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/70263/what-happens-if-an-isp-isolate-a-portion-of-nodes/71975#71975">This has already been asked elsewhere</a>. Provided you are able to connect to just a few well-connected nodes on main-net everything will work as expected.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-11T00:59:37.763Z
2018-03-11T00:59:37.763Z
Willtech
<p>When you install Bitcoin client, how does it discover the nodes to get a copy of the blockchain?
Are their seed nodes ? Are they vulnérables? SPOF ?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-11T01:00:02.500Z
Welcome to Bitcoin.SE! What is SPOF?
Willtech
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-11T09:38:43.927Z
single point of failure
Berreb
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-11T09:41:36.467Z
All the seed nodes are independent of each other AFAIK, if DNS is hacked we likely have bigger problems.
Willtech
<nodes><seed>
How Bitcoin node discovery work?
Berreb
# How Bitcoin node discovery work?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-03-10)

When you install Bitcoin client, how does it discover the nodes to get a copy of the blockchain?
Are their seed nodes ? Are they vulnérables? SPOF ?

**Tags:** nodes, seed

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Welcome to Bitcoin.SE! What is SPOF?  
> **username_0**: single point of failure  
> **username_1**: All the seed nodes are independent of each other AFAIK, if DNS is hacked we likely have bigger problems.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-03-11. Score: 1

There are several hard-coded DNS seeds, which work AFAIK as a DNS round-robin to provide connection to several random nodes.

Once initially connected to nodes, peer discovery is automatic and your node could easily learn about the entire network through just a few connected nodes.

There is a slight chance that a malicious ISP could hijack DNS or for that matter, all Bitcoin traffic, either preventing peer discovery or alternatively providing false or limited results. [This has already been asked elsewhere](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/70263/what-happens-if-an-isp-isolate-a-portion-of-nodes/71975#71975). Provided you are able to connect to just a few well-connected nodes on main-net everything will work as expected.


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