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Operating rippled Servers

The core server of the Ripple peer-to-peer network is rippled. Anyone can run their own rippled server (also known as a rippled node) that follows the network and keeps a complete copy of the Ripple ledger. You can even have your server perform validations and participate in the consensus process.

Types of rippled Servers

The rippled server software can run in several modes depending on its configuration, including:

Stock node - follows the network with a local copy of the ledger.
Validating node - participates in consensus.
Stand-alone mode - for basic testing.

You can also run rippled as a client application for accessing rippled APIs locally. (Two instances of the same binary can run side-by-side in this case; one as a server, and the other running briefly as a client and then terminating.)

Parallel Networks

Most of the time, we describe the Ripple Network as one collective, singular entity -- and that's mostly true. There is one production Ripple Network, and all business that takes place on Ripple occurs within the production Ripple Network.

However, sometimes you may want to do tests and experiments without interacting with the core network. That's why Ripple Labs started the Ripple Test Net, an "alternate universe" network, which can act as a testing ground for applications and the rippled server itself, without impacting the business operations of everyday Ripple users. The Ripple Test Net (also known as the AltNet) has a separate supply of TestNet-only XRP, which Ripple Labs gives away for free to parties interested in developing applications on the Test Net. Contact bwilson@ripple.com to request Test Net XRP.

Caution: Ripple Labs makes no guarantees about the stability of the test network. It has been and continues to used to test various properties of server configuration, network topology, and network performance.

Organizations who want to contribute to the Ripple Network as a validator can start by demonstrating reliability in the Ripple Test Net. Ripple Labs may also reward reliable Test Net validators with production-network XRP.

Over time, there may also be additional, smaller test networks for specific purposes.

Parallel Networks and Consensus

There is no rippled setting that defines which network it uses. Instead, it uses the consensus of validators it trusts to know which ledger to accept as the truth. When different consensus groups of rippled instances only trust other members of the same group, each group continues to operate as a parallel network. Even if malicious or misbehaving nodes connect to both networks, the consensus process overrides the confusion as long as the members of each network are not configured to trust members of another network in excess of their quorum settings.

Reasons to Run a Stock Node

There are lots of reasons you might want to run your own rippled server, but most of them can be summarized as: you can trust your own server, you have control over its workload, and you're not at the mercy of others to decide when and how you can access it.

It is important that you can trust the rippled you use, so you can be certain that the software you are running will behave in the manner specified in its source code. Of course, you must also practice good network security to protect your server from malicious hackers. If you connect to a malicious server, there are myriad ways that it can take advantage of you or cause you to lose money. For example:

A malicious server could report that you were paid when no such payment was made
It could selectively show or hide payment paths and currency exchange offers to guarantee its own profit while not providing you the best deal
If you sent it your account's secret, it could make arbitrary transactions on your behalf, and even transfer or destroy all the money in your account's balances.

Additionally, running your own server gives you admin control over it, which allows you to run important admin-only and load-intensive commands. If you use a shared server, you have to worry about other users of the same server competing with you for the server's computing power. Many of the commands in the WebSocket API can put a lot of strain on the server, so rippled has the option to scale back its responses when it needs to. If you share a server with others, you may not always get the best results possible.

Finally, if you run a validating node, you can use a stock node as a proxy to the public network while keeping your validating node on a private subnet only accessible to the outside world through the stock node. This makes it more difficult to compromise the integrity of your validating node.

Reasons to Run a Validating Node

The robustness of the Ripple network depends on an interconnected web of validators who each trust a few other validators not to collude. The more operators with different interests there are who run validating nodes, the more certain each member of the network can be that it continues to run impartially. If you or your organization relies on the Ripple Network, it is in your interest to contribute to the consensus process.

Not all rippled nodes need to be validating nodes: trusting additional nodes from the same operator does not provide additional protection against collusion. However, an organization may run nodes in multiple regions in order to provide better redundancy in case of natural disasters and other emergencies.

If your organization runs a validating node, you may also run one or more stock nodes, to balance the computing load of API access, or as a proxy between your validation server and the outside network.

System Requirements

A rippled server should run comfortably on commodity hardware, to make it easy to participate in the network. At present, we recommend the following:

Operating System:
- Production: Ubuntu Linux (latest LTS) supported
- Development: Mac OS X, Windows (64-bit), or most Linux distributions
CPU: 64-bit x86_64, 2+ cores
Disk: Minimum 50GB SSD recommended (500+ IOPS, more is better) for the database partition
RAM: 4+GB

Amazon EC2's m3.medium or m3.large VM sizes may be appropriate depending on your workload. (Validating nodes need more resources.)

Naturally, a fast network connection is preferable.

Installing rippled

For development, you can compile rippled from source.

Production rippled instances can use Ripple Labs' binary executable, available from the Ripple Labs apt-get repository.

Binary Installation on Ubuntu

This document assumes that you are using Ubuntu 14.04.

Install the Ripple apt repository:

 $ sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
 $ sudo apt-add-repository 'deb http://mirrors.ripple.com/ubuntu/ trusty stable contrib'
 $ sudo apt-get update

Install the rippled package:
```
 $ sudo apt-get install rippled
```

Configure rippled in /etc/rippled/rippled.cfg:

 [server]
 port_peer
 port_rpc
 port_ws

 [port_peer]
 port = 51235
 ip = 0.0.0.0
 protocol = peer

 [port_rpc]
 port = 51234
 ip = 0.0.0.0
 admin = allow
 protocol = http

 [port_ws]
 port = 51233
 ip = 0.0.0.0
 admin = allow
 protocol = ws

 [peer_private]
 1

 [ledger_history]
 full

 [ssl_verify]
 0

 [sntp_servers]
 time.windows.com
 time.apple.com
 time.nist.gov
 pool.ntp.org

 [rpc_allow_remote]
 1

 [node_db]
 type=nudb
 path=/mnt/rippled/db/nudb

 [database_path]
 /mnt/rippled/db

 [rpc_startup]
 {"command": "log_level", "severity": "warning"}

See the rippled GitHub repository for additional configuration options.

Give rippled permission to mount:

 $ sudo mkdir /mnt/rippled
 $ sudo chown rippled:rippled -R /mnt/rippled

Start the rippled service:
```
 $ sudo service rippled start
```

It can take several minutes for rippled to sync with the rest of the network, during which time it outputs warnings about missing ledgers. After that, you have a fully functional stock rippled node that you can use for local signing and API access to the Ripple Network.

Running a Validating Node

Becoming a validator that participates in the network involves several steps. Initially, the network probably ignores any validations your node provides: this is called being an untrusted validator. Later, after the operators of other rippled validators add your node to their configuration, your node's validations actually contribute to the consensus process. At this point, you have become a trusted validator.

Validator Setup

Install and configure a rippled node
Start rippled:
```
 $ sudo service rippled start
```

Generate a validator key and save the output to a secure place:

 $ rippled --conf /etc/rippled/rippled.cfg -q validation_create
 {
     "status" : "success",
     "validation_key" : "FOLD WERE CHOW WIT SWIM RANK WED DAN LAIN TRIO MURK NELL",
     "validation_public_key" : "n9KHn8NfbBsZV5q8bLfS72XyGqwFt5mgoPbcTV4c6qKiuPTAtXYk",
     "validation_seed" : "ssdecohJMDPFuUPDkmG1w4objZyp4"
 }

Stop rippled:
```
 $ sudo service rippled stop
```
Add the generated validator signing key from above to your rippled.cfg:
```
 [validation_seed]
 ssdecohJMDPFuUPDkmG1w4objZyp4
```
(Optional) If connecting to a parallel network, add core validator IP addresses of parallel network to rippled.cfg:

For example the following IP addresses are the current Ripple Test Net core validators:

    [ips_fixed]
    54.92.66.122 51235
    54.67.72.173 51235
    52.16.66.76 51235
    54.93.66.235 51235
    52.74.67.18 51235
    52.64.9.71 51235
    54.207.20.165 51235
    54.172.212.33 51235
    52.11.28.194 51235
    54.94.245.104 51235
    54.65.200.22 51235
    52.1.205.132 51235

Add core validator validation public keys to rippled.cfg:

The default configuration includes core validators operated by Ripple Labs for the production Ripple Network:

    [validators]
    n949f75evCHwgyP4fPVgaHqNHxUVN15PsJEZ3B3HnXPcPjcZAoy7 RL1
    n9MD5h24qrQqiyBC8aeqqCWvpiBiYQ3jxSr91uiDvmrkyHRdYLUj RL2
    n9L81uNCaPgtUJfaHh89gmdvXKAmSt5Gdsw2g1iPWaPkAHW5Nm4C RL3
    n9KiYM9CgngLvtRCQHZwgC2gjpdaZcCcbt3VboxiNFcKuwFVujzS RL4
    n9LdgEtkmGB9E2h3K4Vp7iGUaKuq23Zr32ehxiU8FWY7xoxbWTSA RL5

If you want to connect to the Ripple Test Net, you would add the validation public keys of the core validators on that network instead:

    [validators]
    n9LnZ1AiyHmytkhLUr89dmL76uxZLzzyregvQVZFkVfqEQTCpg7B
    n9LJWexXc9wxzUKWZe4faTS4N9DUba3jNsByERZSa8MJc2bhCF7c
    n9MnXUt5Qcx3BuBYKJfS4fqSohgkT79NGjXnZeD9joKvP3A5RNGm
    n9LxyXSSrTZ482ceep9WGQnT2nknfzFMFgNL4wMjTUn3SfF3rhtS
    n9MTPLhEEjxcWHfqsXQhFoSUKaqYvU4E7B4yke39EMFm2DhFr43F
    n9Lw3j7THPhKLz2uDqBBWwyxHQC1Foyr3M6JeWCVyu7uhnhL6HA5
    n9L2XLFvcdriK34bCNXexzKMVcsZ9i4UG9J4pykR5c3J8gvBB6fw
    n9JCK3M4ci7b1XRq2wr1Ckd1HNq3Cg7NWrWiKyzJa4R5J489QGer
    n9LXZBs2aBiNsgBkhVJJjDX4xA4DoEBLycF6q8zRhXD1Zu3Kwbe4
    n9Kk6U5nSF8EggfmTpMdna96UuXWAVwSsDSXRkXeZ5vLcAFk77tr
    n9J1voqeu6iZQiLXaMofLeMbv8mbPskJWGYRtjdo8rmpvNdQRyEn
    n9KuCFBLq2GD4vJtoL3tebQJbhcHSd7tMqFM1x9bPK9wSagPJdd1

Adjust the validation quorum value in rippled.cfg:

This sets the minimum of trusted validations a ledger must have before the server considers it fully validated. Note that if you are validating, your validation counts.

For example, a validation quorum for a new Ripple Test Net validator could be set as follows:

    [validation_quorum]
    10

Start rippled untrusted validator
```
 $ sudo service rippled start
```

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