![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/deathwing/q3Z1vUm6-image.png)


### Short Summary

Approximately 3 months ago, I have announced my public node `api.deathwing.me` during these past 3 months, the node had it's ups and downs and have had issues every now and then, but managed to survive a hardfork so far.

Especially right after HF24 happened (*because it somewhat happened prematurely*) there were a lot of updates for the nodes that caused crashing, instability, low browsing experience, errors with calls and many more. However, thanks to @blocktrades and other Hive developers, most of these issues were fixed promptly. Currently, the nodes are more or less stable.

Last month, due to the constant increase in the use, I decided to upgrade the server that runs the node once and for all to an overkill specification for the time being. From 64GB RAM to all the way up to 128GB with an added extra 12 cores.

## Fastest Node on the Blockchain

Believe it or not, `api.deathwing.me` has been more or less the fastest and one of the most stable nodes in the past couple of months (data from @fullnodeupdate and @ausbitbank's [explorer](hive.ausbit.dev))

<sub>This data is fairly inconsistent as there are a lot of factors, that is why I mentioned "more or less"</sub>

### Current Status

As I've reported previously, in one of my posts, September 2020, a month after the node was launched, the total bandwidth use for the node was about **200GB for the month of September** - For **October 2020**, that number rose to approximately **1TB** (it's like 960GB, but hey) and currently, in **November 2020** even though the month isn't over yet, the bandwidth use is about **900GB**.

While the average calls per second rose greatly, just a couple days ago, when I was checking it manually, it was well over 30 calls per second. That's a lot.

### A Sincere Request

As you may know, hardware and servers are not free. It costs money per month to run. Currently, and since day one, I have not powered down my Hive to pay for the servers and I am not planning to, technically, by not powering down, I am investing in Hive every month. :)

However, I do have a plan that will cost quite a lot of money. That is to load-balance (preferably geographically) my node. Currently the node is located in Europe. However, with the number of people we have from regions such as South America, Asia and Southeast Asia, we could see a potentially good performance improvement for them if we were to add nodes in those regions. Alas, the infrastructure costs in those regions are quite high, which in the end, results in high monthly fees for servers.


So my sincere request is, **please check your witness votes.** I will be more than happy if you can vote for me, it doesn't matter whether you think your vote is "too small to make a difference" all votes are. And I'll be happy if I can earn your vote.

**To vote for me as a witness, feel free to use the following links:**

##### [hive.blog](https://wallet.hive.blog/~witnesses?highlight=deathwing)
##### [PeakD](https://peakd.com/me/witnesses) (Write "deathwing" in the name filter)
##### [vote.hive.uno](https://vote.hive.uno/@deathwing) (Supports both Keychain and Hivesigner)

### Huge thanks to:

@blocktrades - For contributing to the hived/hivemind development greatly.
@gtg - For providing snapshots, helping new node operators and people who accidentally corrupt their nodes. (like me)
@themarkymark - For being the #1 fastest uptime monitor for my node.
@ausbitbank - For assisting with downtimes.
@holger80 - For the perfect node benchmark.
@rishi556 - For occasionally attacking my node on accident.
@foxon - For being foxon.

See you all in 9 months, with the 12 months anniversary post.