Deploying Corda to Corda Testnet from your local environment

This document explains how to set up your local network to enable a Corda node to connect to the Corda Testnet. This assumes you are downloading a node ZIP from: https://testnet.corda.network.

Pre-requisites

Set up your local network

For a Corda node to be able to connect to the Corda Testnet and be reachable by counterparties on that network it needs to be reachable on the open internet. Corda is a server which requires an externally visible IP address and several ports in order to operate correctly.

We recommend running your Coda node on cloud infrastructure. If you wish to run Corda on your local machine then you will need to configure your network to enable the Corda node to be reachable from the internet.

注解

You will need access to your network router/gateway to the internet. If you do not have direct access then contact your administrator.

The following steps will describe how to use port forwarding on your router to make sure packets intended for Corda are routed to the right place on your local network.

Set up static IP address local host machine

The next steps will configure your router to forward packets to the Corda node, but for this it is required to set the host machine to have a static IP address. If this isn’t done, and the network is using DHCP dynamic address allocation then the next time the host machine is rebooted it may be on a different IP and the port forwarding will no longer work.

Please consult your operating system documentation for instructions on setting a static IP on the host machine.

Set up port forwarding on your router

Port forwarding is a method of making a computer on your network accessible to computers on the Internet, even though it is behind a router.

注解

All routers are slightly different and you will need to consult the documentation for your specific make and model.

Log in to the admin page of your router (often 192.168.0.1) in your browser bar.

注解

Router administration IP and log in credentials are usually on the bottom or side of your router.

Navigate to the port forwarding section of the admin console.

Add rules for the following ports which Corda uses:

10002
10003
8080

注解

These ports are the defaults for Testnet which are specified in the node.conf. If these conflict with existing services on your host machine they can be changed in the /opt/corda/node.conf file.

For each rule you will also typically have to specify the rule name, the static IP address of the host machine we configured earlier (the same in each case) and the protocol (which is TCP in all cases here).

Please consult your router documentation for specific details on enabling port forwarding.

Open firewall ports

If you are operating a firewall on your host machine or local network you will also need to open the above ports for incoming traffic.

Please consult your firewall documentation for details.

Optional: Configure a static external IP address

Corda expects nodes to have stable addresses over long periods of time. ISPs typically assign dynamic IP addresses to a router and so if your router is rebooted it may not obtain the same external IP and therefore your Corda node will change its address on the Testnet.

You can request a static IP address from your ISP however this may incur a cost.

If the IP address does change then this doesn’t cause issues but it will result in an update to the network map which then needs to be propagated to all peers in the network. There may be some delay in the ability to transact while this happens.

警告

Corda nodes are expected to be online all the time and will send a heartbeat to the network map server to indicate they are operational. If they go offline for a period of time (~24 hours in the case of Testnet) then the node will be removed from the network map. Any nodes which have queued messages for your node will drop these messages, they won’t be delivered and unexpected behaviour may occur.

Test if the ports are open

You can use a port checking tool to make sure the ports are open properly.

Download and install your node

Navigate to https://testnet.corda.network/platform.

Click on the Download button and wait for the ZIP file to download:

_images/testnet-download.png

Unzip the file in your Corda root directory:

mkdir corda
cd corda
cp <PATH_TO_DOWNLOAD>/node.zip .
unzip node.zip
cd node

Run the run-corda.sh script to start your Corda node.

./run-corda.sh

Congratulations! You now have a running Corda node on Testnet.

警告

It is possible to copy the node.zip file from your local machine to any other host machine and run the Corda node from there. Do not run multiple copies of the same node (i.e. with the same identity). If a new copy of the node appears on the network then the network map server will interpret this as a change in the address of the node and route traffic to the most recent instance. Any states which are on the old node will no longer be available and undefined behaviour may result. Please provision a new node from the application instead.

Testing your deployment

To test your deployment is working correctly follow the instructions in Using the Node Explorer to test a Corda node on Corda Testnet to set up the Finance CorDapp and issue cash to a counterparty.