Sync chain more readily from inbound peers during IBD

When in IBD, if the honest chain is only known by inbound peers, then we must
eventually sync from them in order to learn it. This change allows us to
perform initial headers sync and fetch blocks from inbound peers, if we have no
blocks in flight.

The restriction on having no blocks in flight means that we will naturally
throttle our block downloads to any such inbound peers that we may be
downloading from, until we leave IBD. This is a tradeoff between preferring
outbound peers for most of our block download, versus making sure we always
eventually will get blocks we need that are only known by inbound peers even
during IBD, as otherwise we may be stuck in IBD indefinitely (which could have
cascading failure on the network, if a large fraction of the network managed to
get stuck in IBD).

1 files changed, 24 insertions, 3 deletions

diff --git a/src/net_processing.cpp b/src/net_processing.cpp
index 590ce8e839..b525f759e2 100644
--- a/src/net_processing.cpp
+++ b/src/net_processing.cpp
@@ -4681,10 +4681,31 @@ bool PeerManagerImpl::SendMessages(CNode* pto)
         if (m_chainman.m_best_header == nullptr) {
             m_chainman.m_best_header = m_chainman.ActiveChain().Tip();
         }
-        bool fFetch = state.fPreferredDownload || (m_num_preferred_download_peers == 0 && !pto->fClient && !pto->IsAddrFetchConn()); // Download if this is a nice peer, or we have no nice peers and this one might do.
+
+        // Determine whether we might try initial headers sync or parallel
+        // block download from this peer -- this mostly affects behavior while
+        // in IBD (once out of IBD, we sync from all peers).
+        bool sync_blocks_and_headers_from_peer = false;
+        if (state.fPreferredDownload) {
+            sync_blocks_and_headers_from_peer = true;
+        } else if (!pto->fClient && !pto->IsAddrFetchConn()) {
+            // Typically this is an inbound peer. If we don't have any outbound
+            // peers, or if we aren't downloading any blocks from such peers,
+            // then allow block downloads from this peer, too.
+            // We prefer downloading blocks from outbound peers to avoid
+            // putting undue load on (say) some home user who is just making
+            // outbound connections to the network, but if our only source of
+            // the latest blocks is from an inbound peer, we have to be sure to
+            // eventually download it (and not just wait indefinitely for an
+            // outbound peer to have it).
+            if (m_num_preferred_download_peers == 0 || mapBlocksInFlight.empty()) {
+                sync_blocks_and_headers_from_peer = true;
+            }
+        }
+
         if (!state.fSyncStarted && !pto->fClient && !fImporting && !fReindex) {
             // Only actively request headers from a single peer, unless we're close to today.
-            if ((nSyncStarted == 0 && fFetch) || m_chainman.m_best_header->GetBlockTime() > GetAdjustedTime() - 24 * 60 * 60) {
+            if ((nSyncStarted == 0 && sync_blocks_and_headers_from_peer) || m_chainman.m_best_header->GetBlockTime() > GetAdjustedTime() - 24 * 60 * 60) {
                 state.fSyncStarted = true;
                 state.m_headers_sync_timeout = current_time + HEADERS_DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT_BASE +
                     (
@@ -5063,7 +5084,7 @@ bool PeerManagerImpl::SendMessages(CNode* pto)
         // Message: getdata (blocks)
         //
         std::vector<CInv> vGetData;
-        if (!pto->fClient && ((fFetch && !pto->m_limited_node) || !m_chainman.ActiveChainstate().IsInitialBlockDownload()) && state.nBlocksInFlight < MAX_BLOCKS_IN_TRANSIT_PER_PEER) {
+        if (!pto->fClient && ((sync_blocks_and_headers_from_peer && !pto->m_limited_node) || !m_chainman.ActiveChainstate().IsInitialBlockDownload()) && state.nBlocksInFlight < MAX_BLOCKS_IN_TRANSIT_PER_PEER) {
             std::vector<const CBlockIndex*> vToDownload;
             NodeId staller = -1;
             FindNextBlocksToDownload(pto->GetId(), MAX_BLOCKS_IN_TRANSIT_PER_PEER - state.nBlocksInFlight, vToDownload, staller);