How many peers can an Ethereum node have?

Question

Is there any maximum limit on the number of peers an Ethereum node can have? Does this vary for private and public networks?

In case of Bitcoin, is there a limit?

Answer 1

For an ethereum geth node you can specify the maximum number of peer with help of the --maxpeers command-line flag (see https://github.com/ethereumproject/go-ethereum/wiki/Command-Line-Options). It defaults to 25. This limits depends on the node type (e.g. parity or ccp-ethereum have different defaults)

See also

• Ethereum selection of peer nodes and centralization

• https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/9007/how-many-peers-does-one-node-have

• Does the number of geth's maxpeers option include it's own node?

With regard to bitcoin I found this stackexchange entry that states that the limit is 125 (8 outbound+117 inbound) see https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/44504/is-there-a-connections-limit-on-bitcoind