Add a chapter about physical location #3
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This question comes up so often. I want to have a document that explains why the question is wrong, and why the answer if you ask it anwyay is "it's complicated" and "it depends" and "that's not really what you want to know, is it?".
This adds the section with answers to what I guess most companies that send us RFIs want to know. (Or well, I don't know what they really want to *know*, but these are my intepretations of the questions they send).
Szymongib
reviewed
Oct 10, 2024
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| # Physical location | |||
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| We often get asked “Where do your validators run?” | |||
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| We often get asked “Where do your validators run?” | |
| We often get asked “Where do your nodes run?” |
Szymongib
approved these changes
Oct 10, 2024
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| Software consists of computer programs that get executed by a chip. | ||
| In our case, | ||
| that chip is inside a server, | ||
| which is in a rack, | ||
| which is in a building, | ||
| which is part of a data center facility. | ||
| That facility has a clear physical location. | ||
| It’s located in a country, and it has an address. | ||
| We can say that the program is running in that particular location. | ||
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| Blockchains are _distributed systems_. | ||
| They don’t consist of a single program running on a single machine, | ||
| they are emergent systems that arise | ||
| from many instances of a program interacting with each other. | ||
| These instances can run on different machines, | ||
| in different physical locations. | ||
| While a particular instance has a well-defined location, | ||
| we can’t really answer the question of “where” the blockchain network is, | ||
| more specifically than “everywhere where people run nodes”, | ||
| which might be as broad as “everywhere on Earth”.[^1] | ||
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| A blockchain network as a whole does not have a clearly defined location then, | ||
| but at Chorus One we don’t operate the entire blockchain network, | ||
| we operate validators that are _part_ of the network. | ||
| Don’t these validators at least have a clearly defined location? |
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Do we need to go to such details? Since it is a part of "Network Handbook", I would assume readers familiarity with basic blockchain concepts. I am fine leaving it in if you think it can be useful in cases of less technical people.
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| [^1]: Probably except for Antarctica. | ||
| Antarctica doesn’t have a very stable high-bandwidth Internet connection. |
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Running in the middle of the ocean might be challenging as well if we want to be that specific 😉
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| This means that the location of our validator identity | ||
| will generally move around between locations, | ||
| sometimes multiple times per day. |
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| This means that the location of our validator identity | |
| will generally move around between locations, | |
| sometimes multiple times per day. | |
| This means that the location of our validator identity | |
| can move around between locations, | |
| sometimes multiple times per day. |
| and in a city several thousand kilomaters away the next. | ||
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| The details of the failover process | ||
| (and whether we can do this at all) |
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| (and whether we can do this at all) | |
| (and whether it is possible) |
| when hardware reaches the end of its lifespan, | ||
| its replacement will not necessarily be in the same location. | ||
| * **The set of peers changes, and peers move.** | ||
| We more our workloads around, and so do other node operators. |
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| We more our workloads around, and so do other node operators. | |
| We move our workloads around, and so do other node operators. |
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| The details vary from network to network, | ||
| but typically one instance will be actively validating | ||
| (participating in consensus and proposing blocks). | ||
| Other nodes download and validate a copy of the chain, | ||
| so they are ready to take over validator duties at any time, | ||
| but they are not participating in consensus or proposing blocks. |
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| The details vary from network to network, | |
| but typically one instance will be actively validating | |
| (participating in consensus and proposing blocks). | |
| Other nodes download and validate a copy of the chain, | |
| so they are ready to take over validator duties at any time, | |
| but they are not participating in consensus or proposing blocks. | |
| The details vary from network to network, | |
| but typically one instance will be actively validating | |
| (participating in consensus and proposing blocks), | |
| while other nodes download and validate a copy of the chain, | |
| so they are ready to take over validator duties at any time, | |
| but they are not participating in consensus or proposing blocks. |
| but spreading our infrastructure brings challenges of its own. | ||
| As we observed before, | ||
| distributed systems tend to become slower and less stable | ||
| when they are spead out further. |
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| when they are spead out further. | |
| when they are spread out further. |
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Background
As a company we often receive RFIs that include a question about location, and we often get questions from potential clients about location. I usually push back on that question because it is not well specified and can be interpreted in many ways, and a specific answer will go out of date quickly anyway, but I’m tired of having to explain this every time.
That’s why I wrote this chapter, so we can have one standard answer to point people to when the topic comes up again. My goal for this is:
If this chapter doesn’t answer people’s specific question, I included three possible interpretations of “where does it run” at the end of the chapter. We can use this to ask for clarification if people need a more concrete answer to check the box.
Note to reviewers