> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.expanse.tech/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.expanse.tech/developer/how-to-connect-to-the-expanse-network.md).

# How to connect to the Expanse Network?

Gexp continuously attempts to connect to other nodes on the network until it has peers. If you have UPnP enabled on your router or run Expanse on an Internet-facing server, it will also accept connections from other nodes.

Gexp finds peers through something called the discovery protocol. In the discovery protocol, nodes are gossipping with each other to find out about other nodes on the network. In order to get going initially, gexp uses a set of bootstrap nodes whose endpoints are recorded in the source code.

**Checking connectivity and ENODE IDs**

To check how many peers the client is connected to in the interactive console, the net module has two attributes that give you info about the number of peers and whether you are a listening node.

\> net.listening\
true\
\
\> net.peerCount\
4

To get more information about the connected peers, such as IP address and port number, supported protocols, use the peers() function of the admin object. admin.peers() returns the list of currently connected peers.

\> admin.peers\
\[{\
     ID: ‘a4de274d3a159e10c2c9a68c326511236381b84c9ec52e72ad732eb0b2b1a2277938f78593cdbe734e6002bf23114d434a085d260514ab336d4acdc312db671b’,\
     Name: ‘Gexp/v0.9.14/linux/go1.4.2’,\
     Caps: ‘exp/60’,\
     RemoteAddress: ‘5.9.150.40:30301’,\
     LocalAddress: ‘192.168.0.28:39219’\
}, {\
     ID: ‘a979fb575495b8d6db44f750317d0f4622bf4c2aa3365d6af7c284339968eef29b69ad0dce72a4d8db5ebb4968de0e3bec910127f134779fbcb0cb6d3331163c’,\
     Name: ‘Gexp/v0.9.15/linux/go1.4.2’,\
     Caps: ‘exp/60’,\
     RemoteAddress: ‘52.16.188.185:30303’,\
     LocalAddress: ‘192.168.0.28:50995’\
}, {\
     ID: ‘f6ba1f1d9241d48138136ccf5baa6c2c8b008435a1c2bd009ca52fb8edbbc991eba36376beaee9d45f16d5dcbf2ed0bc23006c505d57ffcf70921bd94aa7a172’,\
     Name: ‘pyethapp\_dd52/v0.9.13/linux2/py2.7.9’,\
     Caps: ‘exp/60, p2p/3’,\
     RemoteAddress: ‘144.76.62.101:30303’,\
     LocalAddress: ‘192.168.0.28:40454’\
}, {\
 ID: ‘f4642fa65af50cfdea8fa7414a5def7bb7991478b768e296f5e4a54e8b995de102e0ceae2e826f293c481b5325f89be6d207b003382e18a8ecba66fbaf6416c0’,\
 Name: ‘++exp/Zeppelin/Rascal/v0.9.14/Release/Darwin/clang/int’,\
 Caps: ‘exp/60, shh/2’,\
 RemoteAddress: ‘129.16.191.64:30303’,\
 LocalAddress: ‘192.168.0.28:39705’\
} ]

To check the ports used by gexp and also find your enode URI run:

\> admin.nodeInfo\
{\
 Name: ‘Gexp/v0.9.14/darwin/go1.4.2’,\
 NodeUrl: ‘enode://3414c01c19aa75a34f2dbd2f8d0898dc79d6b219ad77f8155abf1a287ce2ba60f14998a3a98c0cf14915eabfdacf914a92b27a01769de18fa2d049dbf4c17694@\[::]:30303’,\
 NodeID: ‘3414c01c19aa75a34f2dbd2f8d0898dc79d6b219ad77f8155abf1a287ce2ba60f14998a3a98c0cf14915eabfdacf914a92b27a01769de18fa2d049dbf4c17694’,\
 IP: ‘::’,\
 DiscPort: 30303,\
 TCPPort: 30303,\
 Td: ‘2044952618444’,\
 ListenAddr: ‘\[::]:30303’\
}


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