Monitoring service started on 12-Aug-2022 00:00

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Seednodes are used by users that run Freenet in OPENNET mode, in order to initially bootstrap to the network and learn more information about network topology and other peers / nodes. Once enough information about other peers / nodes is learned, Freenet establishes connections with those peers and starts to anonymously exchange data with them, including data about other peers / nodes that are used to connect to further, and rotate as per Freenet's routing protocol. Basically the initial seednodes are the "entry" in the Freenet network for users running in OPENNET mode that connect for the first time. After that, data about other peers / nodes is saved so when the user connects again, if it's not the very first Freenet run, it can have some known peers already to connect to.

The seednodes are run by members of the Freenet community and they are basically just normal Freenet nodes that also have a setting parameter set to "be a seednode". Very simple, a default Freenet node install with an additional click on the settings page.

They are placed distributed on the globe to ensure a certain diversity and avoid "single point of failure" scenario. Requirements for seednodes are pretty simple:
- MOST IMPORTANT: UPTIME: be up / online as much as possible, all the time;
- Have a static IPv4 address (and IPv6 address) - dynamic DNS services for dynamic IP addresses are to be avoided, because they involve an extra DNS look-up from the Freenet clients, but they are not forbidden, so if you have a good DynDNS provider that works nicely and you trust them to be working for the forseeable future and will also maintain your FQDN for long time period, it can be used;
- Abiltity to maintain the IP addresses as much as possible in the future;
- Residential connections (home connections or office connections) are encouraged, if you have static IP addresses, especially as the bandwidth consumed is not excessive;
- Datacenter / enterprise server connections are not discouraged;
- Decent CPU and decent amount of RAM, with wrapper.conf setting tweaked to allow more Java max. memory and more threads;
- Run Freenet with Security settings set to NORMAL|LOW;
- A reasonable datastore is welcomed;
- Skills to keep the host's OS up to date and protect it from online attacks, brute-force scans, etc. (no stupid stuff like SSH open to the world and username: root password: password or etc.);

Get in touch with our community on FMS / Freenet Social in case you can help Freenet. However, only seednodes from known members of the community and known contributors will be accepted, and only when needed. This does not mean you cannot make yourself a known member or contributor, it just takes time - there is plenty of stuff you can do to help.