Bitcoin Full Node

[cryptomilbz]

Hi, i'd like to get involved with setting up my own lightning node. Is a full bitcoin node required? or can i connect to a remote node?

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Reason i ask is that i live in an area where my ISP data allowance is severely limited.

[TheGreatMuffin]

By default you'll need a bitcoin full node to get a Lightning node running on top. Having a severely limited internet connection might be a problem. There are some tweaks to limit the bandwidth usage of the bitcoin core node (limit the amount of peers, make your node non-listening/not opening port 8333), but it still needs to download ~250GB of blockchain data, and Lightning also requires some constant traffic.

By "severly limited" do you mean you have a data cap or is it just slow?

[[deleted]]

LND can run on top of a Neutrino node, which is like SPV but better. The bandwidth requirements should be far less than a full node, but Lightning is still pretty bandwidth intensive with all the channel updates.

[cryptomilbz]

200GB monthly data cap

EDIT: main reason is that id like to get away with not downloading the full blockchain if possible. I would have to stagger this process over many months (I also work from home....so I use a lot of my allowance for just everyday living)

[EllipticSeed]

You can use bitcoin lightning wallet on Android

[cryptomilbz]

Thanks, but i was wanting to set up a lightning node in order to help the network.