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Node FE & Storage Configuration

1

Generate configuration associated with the Node Storage

Generate an ECDSA wallet that will serve as the Node identity to the storage layer and network. On Node FE startup, this wallet will be used to access the appropriate database schema and to authenticate the Node FE to the Towns Chain during registration.
Only one unique Node FE (by wallet identity) can be associated with a Node Storage instance at a given time.
Wallets can quickly be generated on the command line with cast.
# generate a new wallet to console in json format
$ cast wallet n -j
Wallets can also be generated with ethers.js package in javascript. See below for an example in javascript.
# check if node is installed
$ node -v
# installs ethers.js
$ npm i ethers
Then copy-paste the below into a file, address.js. Run with node address.js to generate a new wallet and print key to console.
var ethers = require('ethers');
var crypto = require('crypto');

var id = crypto.randomBytes(32).toString('hex');
var privateKey = "0x"+id;
console.log("SAVE BUT DO NOT SHARE THIS:", privateKey);

var wallet = new ethers.Wallet(privateKey);
console.log("Address: " + wallet.address);
2

Generate configuration associated with the Node FE

During this step, configure your Node FE image or binary to run in your networked environment that has connectivity to the Node Storage instance and set your Node FE environment variables, such as RPC_URL’s, logging level, contract addresses.Some of the required environment variables will be secrets as described in system requirements that will need to be stored and injected in your runtime securely. Choices around secret storage depend largely on the cloud or on-premise hosting environment for the Node FE, which is left up to the node operator.
3

Node Front End (FE)

Configure your Node FE with a publicly addressable, static IPv4 host, ensuring it can serve HTTP1.1 & HTTP2 requests. If behind a termination proxy, configure accordingly. Ensure your network does not proxy traffic through an ALB as this has been known to cause issues with client connectivity.Configure DNS with a hostname and either an A record or CNAME record to your static IPv4 address.
By convention, it is reccommended that hostnames for nodes in mainnet be defined on a per operator address basis with a subdomain using an airport code prefix distinct from other node operators as in <airport-code>-<node_number>.<domain>. See mainnet node list for additional examples of the convention.
Application level load balancers (ALBs) require a very specific configuration to handle gRPC traffic as well as ALPN with HTTP1/2 and therefore are not supported at this time.Terminate TLS at your origin server and use a static IPv4 address for your Node FE. Network load balancers are supported assuming 1 LB instance per origin.
4

Node Storage Setup

Set up Node Storage (e.g., Postgres), ensuring your Node FE can connect within your hosting network.Run network probes on the Node FE in info mode to ensure network connectivity, TLS termination, and that the node is publicly addressable over DNS.
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