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---
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title: Monitoring with Ethstats
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description: Setting up an Ethstats server
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---
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Ethstats is a service that displays real time and historical statistics about individual
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nodes connected to a network and about the network itself. Individual node statistics include
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the last received block, block time, propagation time, connected peers, latency etc. Network
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metrics include the number of nodes, average block times, node geolocation,
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transaction counts etc.
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These statistics are presented to the user in the form of a dashboard served to a web browser.
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This can be configured using the public Ethstats server for Ethereum mainnet or some
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public testnets, or using a local copy of Ethstats for private networks. This page will
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demonstrate how to set up an Ethstats dashboard for private and public networks.
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## Prerequisites {#prerequisites}
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To follow the instructions on this page the following are required:
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- Geth
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- Node
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- NPM
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- Git
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## Ethstats {#ethstats}
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Ethstats has three components:
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- a server that consumes data sent to it by each individual node on a network and serves
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statistics generated from that data.
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- a client that queries a node and sends its data to the server
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- a dashboard that displays the statistics generated by the server
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The summary dashboard for Ethereum Mainnet can be viewed at [ethstats.net](https://ethstats.net/).
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![Ethstats](/images/docs/ethstats-mainnet.png)
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Note that the Ethstats dashboard is not a reliable source of information about the entire Ethereum
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network because submitting data to the Ethstats server is voluntary and has to be configured by
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individual nodes. Therefore, many nodes are omitted from the summary statistics.
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## How to use {#how-to-use}
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To report statistics about the local node to Ethstats, an Ethstats server and Ethstats client both have
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to be installed alongside Geth. There are several options for installing Ethstats clients and servers,
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each with detailed installation instructions. They all share the common trait that an Ethstats service is
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started with a specific URL that can be passed to Geth.
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[EthNetStats "Classic"](https://github.com/ethereum/eth-netstats)
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[EthNet Intelligence API](https://github.com/ethereum/eth-net-intelligence-api)
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[Goerli Ethstats client](https://github.com/goerli/ethstats-client)
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[Goerli Ethstats server](https://github.com/goerli/ethstats-server)
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If enabled, Geth spins up a minimal Ethstats reporting daemon that pushes statistics about the
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local node to the Ethstats server.
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To enable this, start Geth with the `ethstats` flag, passing the Ethstats service (nodename:secret@host:port) URL.
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```sh
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geth <other commands> --ethstats node1:secret:127.0.0.1:9000
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```
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The local node will then report to Ethstats, and the statistics will be displayed in a dashboard that can be
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accessed via the web browser.
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## Note on WS_secret {#note-on-ws-secret}
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The `WS_secret` parameter is required for connecting to an Ethstats server. For a local network this can be user-defined
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on startup by providing it as an environment variable. However, for Ethereum mainnet and the public testnets predefined
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values must be known. Historically these have been made available on Gitter and Skype channels or of a forum, but these are
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no longer in use. The user will have to track down existing Ethstats users to request the `WS_secret`.
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