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I have setup a substrate validator for a project running on cloud provider and it is working ok, but I would like to self host the validator and conceal its ip address by having a cloud server hosted reverse proxy (so hosting company can deal with any ddos).

Is there a recommended method for going about this, like is this something people use nginx for?

Thanks in advance, and apologies for my ignorance. Am more than happy to continue reading up if I know what is the correct direction.

Regards, Binch

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You should not run a validator behind a proxy. This is a decentralized network and it is quite important that the nodes are reachable by other nodes. These proxies also do not support the p2p protocol we are using.

If you can DDOS a node, this is a bug in the node and that needs to be fixed.

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  • Thanks @bkchr but minimally concerned about node failing due to DDOS, more the residential connection getting targeted and flooding there affecting others. And potentially anonymity/known fixed ip off into the future. Is there no way to obfuscate validator ip? Meaning validators in this scenario are always run in data centres (which decreases a component of decentralisation)? Or maybe can you run a node or 2 in a data centre, then connect validator just to them?
    – Binch
    Commented May 18 at 0:44
  • No there is no way to do this. You can also not obfuscate the validator IP. I mean you could do this, if do not require direct connections between validators. For Polkadot we require this.
    – bkchr ♦
    Commented May 19 at 22:10
  • Also just because you need to be able to access the validator, it doesn't mean that you need a data center for this.
    – bkchr ♦
    Commented May 19 at 22:11
  • Thanks+sorry wasn't clear. Many other services/lower priority tasks have ports open on residential ip. Not sure they are as robust as substrate=> not keen on ip being visible for their sake, thus data centre reference (as in my particular scenario)
    – Binch
    Commented May 20 at 4:28
  • there are command line options for node startup like: --public-addr which is in documentation for use with proxy to reference the ip address, is this being deprecated or could it be an option? Thanks @bkchr
    – Binch
    Commented May 20 at 4:30

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