While I was trying out Bitcoin with Tor a while ago, I found that it was impossible to get connected in a reasonable amount of time. See the debug.log excerpt below.
Code:Starting 2 BitcoinMiner threads BitcoinMiner started BitcoinMiner started trying connection lastseen=-2.0hrs lasttry=-357170.7hrs proxy connecting proxy connecting proxy connected IRC :giraffe.heliacal.net NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname… IRC :giraffe.heliacal.net NOTICE AUTH :*** Your forward and reverse DNS do not match, ignoring hostname. IRC ERROR :Closing Link: 208.53.142.42 (Registration timed out) IRC socket closed IRC waiting 71 seconds to reconnect proxy connecting proxy connected IRC :giraffe.heliacal.net NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname… IRC :giraffe.heliacal.net NOTICE AUTH :*** Your forward and reverse DNS do not match, ignoring hostname. trying connection lastseen=-2.0hrs lasttry=-357170.7hrs proxy connecting IRC ERROR :Closing Link: 208.53.142.42 (Registration timed out) IRC socket closed IRC waiting 138 seconds to reconnect trying connection lastseen=-2.1hrs lasttry=-357170.7hrs proxy connecting proxy connecting proxy connected IRC :giraffe.heliacal.net NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname… IRC :giraffe.heliacal.net NOTICE AUTH :*** Your forward and reverse DNS do not match, ignoring hostname. DelayedRepaint trying connection lastseen=-2.1hrs lasttry=-357170.8hrs proxy connecting IRC ERROR :Closing Link: 208.53.142.42 (Registration timed out) IRC socket closed IRC waiting 211 seconds to reconnect DelayedRepaint trying connection lastseen=-2.1hrs lasttry=-357170.8hrs proxy connecting proxy connecting trying connection lastseen=-2.2hrs lasttry=-357170.8hrs proxy connecting proxy connected IRC :giraffe.heliacal.net NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname… IRC :giraffe.heliacal.net NOTICE AUTH :*** Your forward and reverse DNS do not match, ignoring hostname. IRC ERROR :Closing Link: 208.53.142.42 (Registration timed out) IRC socket closed IRC waiting 292 seconds to reconnect trying connection lastseen=-2.2hrs lasttry=-357170.9hrs proxy connecting DelayedRepaint DBFlush(false) addr.dat refcount=0 addr.dat flush ler exiting ThreadMessageHandler exiting blkindex.dat refcount=0 blkindex.dat flush ThreadIRCSeed exiting ThreadBitcoinMiner exiting, 1 threads remaining ThreadBitcoinMiner exiting, 0 threads remaining wallet.dat refcount=0 wallet.dat flush StopNode() DBFlush(true) Bitcoin exiting I know that the guy who operates irc.lfnet.org is around here. Maybe he can remove that hostname limitation, since it’s blocking some users.
Also, most of the seednodes are gone. Only 37 out of 230 are accepting connections on port 8333. This makes connecting without IRC very slow. The offline ones should be removed. A list of online seednodes is attached.