How a Light Node can get a block?

Question

I'd like to better understand how a light node can retrieve a complete node. If I understood correctly, I can consider a light node a node which is part of the peer-to-peer network that receives and stores only block headers, which means around 80 Bytes every 10 minutes (of course with some approximations).

Suppose that the light client wants to retrieve the complete block number 1234. I've seen on the documentation the getData message, which other nodes can reply with a block message.

Do you have any hints on how to evaluate how many bytes the light client must send for the getData message and how many bytes must be received? I think it could sufficient to retrieve only one block from the network since the light node can validate if this block is part of its local head-only-blockchain.

Thanks for the support :)

Answer 1

Suppose that the light client wants to retrieve the complete block number 1234. I've seen on the documentation the getdata message, which other nodes can reply with a block message.

Do you have any hints on how to evaluate how many bytes the light client must send for the getdata message and how many bytes must be received?

It depends on how big the block is. The block is 0-1 MB prior to segregated witness activating, and 0-4 MB afterward. In general, the earlier the block is from, the less data it contains.

There's some overhead for the message header, but it's 24 bytes, so it doesn't really matter.