Hardware Requirements
Below are the hardware requirements for running a Node and Gateway. Unlike during BetaNet, the Node and Gateway must be on separate machines it is highly recommended on separate networks.
Node
Nodes are high-powered machines that use both a CPU and GPU. The software does support full CPU Nodes, but a higher core count is required. In addition, as the software becomes more mature and more power is extracted from the GPU, the hardware requirements for such Nodes will likely increase.
CPU |
High core count modern CPU
|
---|---|
GPU |
Nvidia Turing: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 or greater Nvidia Ampere: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or greater |
RAM |
16 GB DDR4 or more
|
Storage |
1 TB high-speed enterprise NVMe (PCI) SSD
|
Bandwidth | 100 Mbps upload / 100 Mbps download
|
IP Address | Static IP address recommended.
|
Turing or Ampere GPU Requirement
The xx network requires an Nvidia Turing or Ampere GPU due to upgrades to the microarchitecture of the shaders, granting an order of magnitude increase in performance for the specific workloads used. In addition, the mul units have been increased to 32 bits, which significantly increases the speed of the modular exponentiation and modular multiplication, which are some of the core cryptographic operations of the cMix protocol.
Gateway
Gateways require relatively low-powered machines. Every Node must have a Gateway.
The role of the Gateway is to be the Node’s “public face.” As such, it needs to be generally available; bandwidth and latency are hugely important.
To achieve this, the team highly recommends that the Gateway be hosted on a VPS or in a colocation center to ensure global access. Regardless of the configuration, it is recommended that a Gateway has a low latency link to their Node, preferably below 50 milliseconds with a maximum of 100 milliseconds.
Recommended Configuration
CPU |
Four core modern CPU, cloud deployment recommended
|
---|---|
GPU | Not required |
RAM | 8 GB or more |
Storage |
500 GB SSD (minimum SATA / preferred NVMe)
|
Bandwidth | 100 Mbps upload / 100 Mbps download |
Latency | Recommended: 50 milliseconds or less between the Node and Gateway
Required: 100 milliseconds or less between the Node and Gateway |
IP Address | Static IP address required.
|
Gateway Recommended VPSes
The team has researched VPSes at a variety of commonly used providers. The following should meet the requirements. Please research what is available in your geographic region before making a decision.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) | c5.xlarge (~$122/month) |
---|---|
Microsoft Azure | F4s v2 (~$121/month) |
Google Cloud | c2-standard-4 (~$80/month) |
TransIP | X8 + SSD space (~$77/month) |
Hetzner | CPX31 + SSD space (~$45.50/month) |
Contabo | VPS 700 ($11/month) or VPS M SSD + SSD space (~$12/month) |
Alternate Gateway Configurations
It has come to the team’s attention that VPS solutions with acceptable latency are prohibitively expensive for many Node operators. There are alternative configurations that should be viable for at least the beginning of MainNet. However, it is likely that as the network matures, these configurations will not be sufficient.
Gateways Hosted Residentially or Commercially on a Separate Line from the Node
In the event that a Node operator cannot secure a VPS, the next best configuration is to have it hosted on a physical machine with a separate internet connection from this Node. This configuration would be best at two separate physical locations but can be at the same physical location.
Gateways Hosted Residentially or Commercially on the same Line as the Node
It is possible to host the Gateway on the same LAN as the Node. However, this configuration does limit the security provided by the Gateway because, in the event that the Gateway is inundated with requests, it could limit the available bandwidth for the Node. Furthermore, in this configuration, all clients will know the IP of the Node because it would be the same as the advertised Gateway IP.
Under such a configuration, the minimum requirement for the joint connection would be:
Joint Bandwidth | 200 Mbps upload / 200 Mbps download |
---|
Unsupported Configurations
Within the BetaNet, a common configuration was to host the Gateway and Node on the same machine. This configuration is NOT supported within the ProtoNet or MainNet.
Configurations and the MainNet Transition Program
At network launch, the MainNet Transition Program will accept applications with all configurations listed above. As the network matures, the program may adapt its requirements if necessary for network performance or stability.