[10] Sophisticated ping strategy and background pinging

[sschiessl-bcp]

Ping Strategy

The first step for the new ping strategy was completed with #1521

In the next step I propose to do a binary-tree like ping strategy.

• Ping 2 random nodes of each region
• Select 2 best regions, ping 2 random nodes in each country
• Select best country, ping all nodes within

The ping strategy stops when a sufficiently fast node has been found. If first iteration is not successfull, all nodes are pinged until a sufficiently fast one is found. In the next ping cycle the old region / country is remembered to accelerate pinging.

Background pinging

• After nodes with sufficient connectivity are found, the pinging will resume in the background

In order to achieve this it must be able to manually show the node list even if auto select is one.

[wmbutler]

Great strategy.

[ryanRfox]

Great idea @sschiessl-bcp. I recently posted BitShares Network Map #bitshares-core/1348 which may be considered to visualize the connections the client is discovering/connecting to/excluding/etc. May also be display info about each node on the map.

[sschiessl-bcp]

I will re-evaluate background pinging when doing this task (see #1940)

[startailcoon]

How is work progressing on this?

I'm looking forward to your work on background pinging as well

[sschiessl-bcp]

This is done, just not tested well enough due to delays. Will come soon.

Background pinging also works nicely, but will require UX and not within scope of this issue.

[sschiessl-bcp]

I included the background pinging and increased the estimate, will adjust when done.

Done so far

• introduce tree ping strategy
• fixed some API detrails
• completely reworked doLatency update, allows background pinging as well. On first load, UI will connect when sufficient connectivity is found and ping rest in background
• allow to see nodes even when auto-select
• introduce latencyPreferences (region and country, automatically set after pinging all nodes manually)

Outstanding:

• Docs

[sschiessl-bcp]

Done now. Hours have been updated, please adjust if not acceptable.

[sschiessl-bcp]

I have included a better UX for background pinging, took 1,5h more, including testing. Please adjust or discuss.

I will not include user node management and have moved it to follow up issue to be able to include it in this staging release.