What is the best Lightning implementation to obtain the network graph?

Question

I want to obtain a fresh snapshot of the Lightning network from my own node. So far I've experimented with Eclair, its API calls allnodes, allchannels, and allupdates give me the information in the following format (examples from testnet).

A node:

{
    "signature": "304502210091f498ae307be653c3dc54954e4e20fcf1a42ff6f0ff7cfe9f1b4367f64349f2022069931b88e1a05cf16ebd08a7272f2249ec47816c9bda51d7b1b4c70b35ed580001",
    "features": "",
    "timestamp": 1543424260,
    "nodeId": "03be1602dd945198ad92b96ed6de85ba41d6c69cc5e81826d5d05a176bf9a38fcd",
    "rgbColor": "#e20f00",
    "alias": "shangod1933e2a-3f17-4",
    "addresses": [
      "54.242.15.59:9735"
    ]
  },

A channel:

{
    "shortChannelId": "1288195x260x0",
    "a": "02ece82b43452154392772d63c0a244f1592f0d29037c88020118889b76851173f",
    "b": "03933884aaf1d6b108397e5efe5c86bcf2d8ca8d2f700eda99db9214fc2712b134"
  },

An update:

{
    "signature": "3045022100fb115950efdeb745d16e79b13be18d01a02c66f2bad0a2050ac157f70e51fe9502201694b2ff817bd5a1bc44488e9732e233f2ca93528df5cbe134ecc2555e7b2a5601",
    "chainHash": "43497fd7f826957108f4a30fd9cec3aeba79972084e90ead01ea330900000000",
    "shortChannelId": "1448407x42x1",
    "timestamp": 1560197957,
    "messageFlags": 1,
    "channelFlags": 0,
    "cltvExpiryDelta": 144,
    "htlcMinimumMsat": 1000,
    "feeBaseMsat": 1000,
    "feeProportionalMillionths": 1,
    "htlcMaximumMsat": 16777215000
  },

Do other implementations (LND, c-lightning) provide the same information (maybe in a different format)? If I want to get the most available information about nodes and channels, should I stick with Eclair or switch to another implementation?

Answer 1

So in c-lightning you have the two api calls listnodes and listchannels

here are sample outputs from a mainnet c-lightning nodes:

"channels": [
    {
      "source": "0250373555232cec757ea141273e75381c84cc3ab22f1e3a3ca5a2dc55b1904c24", 
      "destination": "02ef61a252f9504a42fc264a28476f44cea0711a44b2da0bd729ad52aaee9d86b7", 
      "short_channel_id": "505149x622x0", 
      "public": true, 
      "satoshis": 300000, 
      "amount_msat": "300000000msat", 
      "message_flags": 1, 
      "channel_flags": 0, 
      "flags": 256, 
      "active": true, 
      "last_update": 1559441480, 
      "base_fee_millisatoshi": 1000, 
      "fee_per_millionth": 10, 
      "delay": 14
    }

and

"nodes": [
    {
      "nodeid": "039f96b5dc60b60596dafc870ae104beb6cfaa40aa718b3e9dab9db6b1e52ed3b8", 
      "alias": "DACSC", 
      "color": "3399ff", 
      "last_timestamp": 1559456735, 
      "globalfeatures": "", 
      "global_features": "", 
      "addresses": [
        {
          "type": "ipv4", 
          "address": "92.86.218.107", 
          "port": 9735
        }
      ]
    }

on the other side if you use lnd there ist the listnetwork command which prints a large json blob which has two fields nodes and edges

for a random node the entrie looks like that:

"nodes": [
    {
      "last_update": 1559598407,
      "pub_key": "0200072fd301cb4a680f26d87c28b705ccd6a1d5b00f1b5efd7fe5f998f1bbb1f1",
      "alias": "OutaSpace 🚀",
      "addresses": [
        {
          "network": "tcp",
          "addr": "46.163.78.93:9760"
        },
        {
          "network": "tcp",
          "addr": "[2a01:488:66:1000:2ea3:4e5d:0:1]:9760"
        },
        {
          "network": "tcp",
          "addr": "2dkobxxunnjatyph.onion:9760"
        },
        {
          "network": "tcp",
          "addr": "nzslu33ecbokyn32teza2peiiiuye43ftom7jvnuhsxdbg3vhw7w3aqd.onion:9760"
        }
      ],
      "color": "#123456"
    },

and for a random channel it looks like that:

{
    "channel_id": "564791635544965120",
    "chan_point": "4297b5fe9beeb701c67fd0f84861b22edbcafe5c25be67324ab11129226356a1:0",
    "last_update": 1552879381,
    "node1_pub": "028aa5a991a2acf33da91674fe062219b640e5e57d77a48de6df3c0d30be22b05b",
    "node2_pub": "03fab7f8655169ea77d9691d4bd359e97782cb6177a6f76383994ed9c262af97a5",
    "capacity": "50000",
    "node1_policy": {
      "time_lock_delta": 14,
      "min_htlc": "1000",
      "fee_base_msat": "1000",
      "fee_rate_milli_msat": "10",
      "disabled": false,
      "max_htlc_msat": "0"
    },
    "node2_policy": {
      "time_lock_delta": 144,
      "min_htlc": "0",
      "fee_base_msat": "1000",
      "fee_rate_milli_msat": "1",
      "disabled": true,
      "max_htlc_msat": "50000000"
    }
  },

so you see the information is in all cases eclair, lnd and c-lightning pretty much the one from bolt 07 and the gossip protocol. just the formatting is different. There are slight changes with also showing signatures of messages but the core info is the same.