Starting a Private Network

A private network can be used to test your applications in an isolated environment before you deploy to Swarm mainnet. It can be started by overriding the default configuration values of your Swarm node. Throughout this tutorial, we will make use of configuration files to configure the nodes but of course you can also do the same using flags or environment variables (see Start your node).

Start a network on your own computer

Configuration

Starting a network is easiest achieved by making use of configuration files. We need at least two nodes to start a network. Hence, below two configuration files are provided. Save them respectively as config_1.yaml and config_2.yaml.

config_1.yaml

network-id: 7357
api-addr: 127.0.0.1:1633
p2p-addr: :1634
bootnode: ""
data-dir: /tmp/bee/node1
password: set-a-strong-password
swap-enable: false
mainnet: false
blockchain-rpc-endpoint: https://sepolia.dev.fairdatasociety.org
verbosity: 5
full-node: true 

config_2.yaml

network-id: 7357
api-addr: 127.0.0.1::1733
p2p-addr: :1734
data-dir: /tmp/bee/node2
bootnode: ""
password: set-a-strong-password
welcome-message: "Bzz Bzz Bzz"
swap-enable: false
mainnet: false
blockchain-rpc-endpoint: https://sepolia.dev.fairdatasociety.org
verbosity: 5
full-node: true 

Note that for each node, we provide a different api-addr. If we had not specified different addresses here, we would get an address already in use error, as no two applications can listen to the same port. We also specify a different p2p-addr. If we had not, our nodes would not be able to communicate with each other. We also specify a separate data-dir for each node, as each node must have its own separate key and chunk data store.

We also provide a network-id, so that our network remains separate from the Swarm mainnet, which has network-id 1. Nodes will not connect to peers which have a different network id. We also set our bootnode to be the empty string "". A bootnode is responsible for bootstrapping the network so that a new node can find its first few peers before it begins its own journey to find friends in the Swarm. In Swarm any node can be used as a bootnode. Later, we will use our first node as the bootnode for our other node(s), but for now we leave this option blank.

We have set mainnet to false so that our node runs on the Sepolia testnet, and we provide an RPC endpoint for Sepolia in the blockchain-rpc-endpoint option. We have also set full-node and swap-enable to true so that we can run full nodes.

Log verbosity has been set to level 5 with the verbosity option. By setting it at the highest level of 5, we make sure all important information is shown in our logs. Setting this is optional.

Finally, note the welcome-message in the first nodes configuration file. This is a friendly feature allowing you to send a message to peers that connect to you!

Starting Your Nodes

Now we have created our configuration files, let's start our nodes by running bee start --config config_1.yaml, then in another Terminal session, run bee start --config config_2.yaml.

We can now inspect the state of our network by sending HTTP requests to the API.

curl -s http://localhost:1633/topology | jq .connected

curl -s http://localhost:1733/topology | jq .connected

No connections yet? Right! Let's remedy that!

info

Here we are using the jq command line utility to count the amount of objects in the peers array in the JSON response we have received from our API, learn more about how to install and use jq here.

Making a network

In order to create a network from our two isolated nodes, we must first instruct our nodes to connect to each other. This step is not explicitly needed if you connect to the main Swarm network, as the default bootnodes in the Swarm network will automatically suggest peers.

First, we will need to find out the network address of the first node. To do this, we send a HTTP request to the addresses endpoint of the API.

curl localhost:1633/addresses | jq

{
  "overlay": "b1978be389998e8c8596ef3c3a54214e2d4db764898ec17ec1ad5f19cdf7cc59",
  "underlay": [
    "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/1634/p2p/QmQHgcpizgoybDtrQXCWRSGdTP526ufeMFn1PyeGd1zMEZ",
    "/ip4/172.25.128.69/tcp/1634/p2p/QmQHgcpizgoybDtrQXCWRSGdTP526ufeMFn1PyeGd1zMEZ",
    "/ip6/::1/tcp/1634/p2p/QmQHgcpizgoybDtrQXCWRSGdTP526ufeMFn1PyeGd1zMEZ"
  ],
  "ethereum": "0xd22cc790e2aef341827e1e49cc631d2a16898cd9",
  "publicKey": "023b26ce8b78ed8cdb07f3af3d284c95bee5e038e7c5d0c397b8a5e33424f5d790",
  "pssPublicKey": "039ceb9c1f0afedf79991d86d89ccf4e96511cf656b43971dc3e878173f7462487"
}

Here, we get firstly the overlay address - this is the permanent address Swarm uses as your anonymous identity in the network and secondly, a list of all the multiaddresses, which are physical network addresses at which you node can be found by peers.

Note the addresses starting with an /ip4, followed by 127.0.0.1, which is the localhost internal network in your computer. Now we can use this full address to be the bootnode of our second node so that when it starts up, it goes to this address and both nodes become peers of each other. Let's add this into our config_2.yaml file.

config_2.yaml

network-id: 7357
api-addr: 127.0.0.1::1733
p2p-addr: :1734
data-dir: /tmp/bee/node2
bootnode: "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/1634/p2p/QmQHgcpizgoybDtrQXCWRSGdTP526ufeMFn1PyeGd1zMEZ"
password: set-a-strong-password
welcome-message: "Bzz Bzz Bzz"
swap-enable: false
blockchain-rpc-endpoint: https://sepolia.dev.fairdatasociety.org
verbosity: 5
full-node: true 

Now, we can shut our second node and reboot with the new configuration.

Look at the the output for your first node, you should see our connection message!

Let's also verify that we can see both nodes in using each other's API's.

curl -s http://localhost:1633/peers | jq

curl -s http://localhost:1733/peers | jq

Congratulations! You have made your own tiny two bee Swarm! 🐝 🐝

Funding Nodes

While you have successfully set up two nodes, they are currently unfunded with either sETH or sBZZ. Sepolia ETH (sETH) is required for issuing transactions on the Sepolia testnet, and Sepolia BZZ (sBZZ) is required for your node to operate as a full staking node.

To fund our nodes, we need to first collect the blockchain addresses for each node. We can use the /addresses endpoint for this:

curl localhost:1633/addresses | jq

{
  "overlay": "b1978be389998e8c8596ef3c3a54214e2d4db764898ec17ec1ad5f19cdf7cc59",
  "underlay": [
    "/ip4/127.0.0.1/tcp/1634/p2p/QmQHgcpizgoybDtrQXCWRSGdTP526ufeMFn1PyeGd1zMEZ",
    "/ip4/172.25.128.69/tcp/1634/p2p/QmQHgcpizgoybDtrQXCWRSGdTP526ufeMFn1PyeGd1zMEZ",
    "/ip6/::1/tcp/1634/p2p/QmQHgcpizgoybDtrQXCWRSGdTP526ufeMFn1PyeGd1zMEZ"
  ],
  "ethereum": "0xd22cc790e2aef341827e1e49cc631d2a16898cd9",
  "publicKey": "023b26ce8b78ed8cdb07f3af3d284c95bee5e038e7c5d0c397b8a5e33424f5d790",
  "pssPublicKey": "039ceb9c1f0afedf79991d86d89ccf4e96511cf656b43971dc3e878173f7462487"
}

Then copy the address in the "ethereum" field. This is the address you need to send sETH and sBZZ to. There are many public faucets you can use to obtain Sepolia ETH, such as this one from Infura.

To get Sepolia BZZ (sBZZ) you can use this Uniswap market, just make sure that you've switched to the Sepolia network in your browser wallet.

You will need to send only a very small amount of sETH such as 0.01 sETH, to get started. You will need 10 sBZZ to run a full node with staking.

After sending sETH and sBZZ to your node's address which you copied above, restart your node and it should begin operating properly as a full node.

Repeat these same steps with the other node in order to complete a private test network of two full nodes.

Start a network on your own computer​

Configuration​

Starting Your Nodes​

Making a network​

Funding Nodes​

Start a network on your own computer

Configuration

Starting Your Nodes

Making a network

Funding Nodes