White Noise · A support exchange in public
20 relays meet a 16-relay limit
A failed group invitation exposes two separate problems: a relay-directory limit that stops the operation, and an earlier bug that replaced a user’s relay list instead of adding to it.
The invitation failed before Sondre could join the btc++ group. White Noise’s error named a specific obstacle: relay endpoint count 20 exceeds limit 16
. The report describes a confusing sequence of relay-list changes, a successful invitation to a small group, and a failure after the previous relays were restored.
Max’s reply puts the immediate cause in the inbox list, which had twenty relays against White Noise’s current limit of sixteen. But the reply also acknowledges that rejecting the whole operation is a bug: There is still the bug that we're failing hard
. Key packages might have been available from a smaller selection of those relays.
That matters because the complaint is not simply that somebody chose too many servers. It is also about what an application does when it encounters more than it is prepared to handle. The reported error concerns relay endpoints; it is not a sixteen-person limit on the group.
A separate reply addresses the earlier replacement of the user’s relay list. Max says: There was a bug that instead of adding it replaced. But that's fixed already.
The same reply recommends retaining existing relays and adding one suited to larger events and more concurrent connections.
In a broader public note, Max recommends three to five relays, arguing that long lists increase the bandwidth and connection work required of other clients. That recommendation and the acknowledged failure behaviour are different parts of the story. Reducing a list may avoid the limit; handling the limit gracefully remains work for the application.
The replies report the relay-list replacement bug fixed. They do not report a shipped fix for the invitation’s hard failure.
