🔧Additional Configuration

• Remove or Pause Packages

• Open Ports on your Router

• Static IP Address

Remove or Pause Packages

Packages can be removed or paused by navigating to the My DApps and selecting the Manage option.

The package can then be paused or started, or removed if needed.

Open Ports on your Router

Ethereum operates uses a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) network. For this to function optimally, it requires two-way communication between participants.

Ether.fi P2P network used by the Obol DVT Cluster

To know which ports you need to look at each package you have installed and see which ports need to be accessible.

How can I check if a port is accessible?

Firstly, you need to know your IP address. Make sure you are using a device that is on the same network as your Dappnode machine and isn't using any VPN service.

To find the IP address of your Dappnode machine, click on the "DAppNode Identity" icon in the top menu. For port checking, you will use the "External IP" but also make a note of the "Internal IP" as that might be needed later when opening the ports.

Next, you can use a port checker website e.g. https://www.portcheckers.com to see if a port on your network is open or closed. How to find which ports to check is shown below.

Navigate to Support and click on the Ports menu. This will list out all the ports that need to be opened for your packages to work correctly.

If all of the ports are already open... great! You don't need to do anything else for the port configuration. However, if some or all of the ports are closed, then you should try the following steps to open them as this will significantly increase your P2P connectivity and the overall health of your node and the Ethereum network.

Automated Port Opening

If your router has a setting for uPNP then you can try enabling that setting.

This allows the Dappnode machine to talk to your router and tell it which ports it needs to be open. This is the best way to set up your machine, so that in the future if you add another package, the ports it needs will automatically be opened.

Manual Port Opening

On your router, if you have the option, open those specific ports and enable port-forwarding to your Dappnode machine.

This will depend on your router and the configuration that it has available. For port forwarding, you will need to know the "Internal IP" address of your Dappnode machine (found in the info box above), so that the router can send traffic coming in from the internet to your Dappnode machine.

The logic is looks like this:

"Send any traffic that comes in from the internet on port 9000 to the internal IP address 192.168.2.11 (your Dappnode machine) on port 9000"

If you get to this step and would like more guidance, please reach out to us on the Ether.fi Discord.

If you don't have the option on your router to open any ports, don't worry, it won't stop your Ethereum node from functioning and participating in the network, but it will be slower to find peers and may be less effective as an Obol cluster node.

Static IP Address

By default, most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) will provide users with a dynamic IP address. This is an IP address that changes every time the router restarts. This can cause problems with some configurations e.g. you hardcode an IP address when connecting.

Also, not all ISPs provide dynamic IP addresses that can be accessed directly from the internet. For a fee, some ISPs will allow you to purchase a static IP address that won't change when you restart your router and also allow direct connections to the internet.

While this may not be a problem for your setup, it is something to consider when you start looking at the P2P connections used when running an Ethereum node and a Charon Cluster.