Monitor

The Monitor is a continuous service that performs comprehensive health checks on validated relays using NIP-11 and NIP-66 protocols. It is the most complex service in BigBrotr, producing multiple metadata types per relay per cycle.

Purpose

Knowing that a relay exists is not enough. The Monitor answers: How healthy is this relay right now? It collects relay information documents (NIP-11), runs six different health tests (NIP-66), stores results as content-addressed metadata, and optionally publishes monitoring data as Nostr events.

How It Works

For each validated relay in the current batch:

NIP-11: Relay Information

Fetches the NIP-11 Relay Information Document via HTTP(S). This JSON document describes the relay’s capabilities, limitations, and software:

• Relay name and description
• Software name and version
• Supported NIPs list
• Relay limitations (max message length, max subscriptions, etc.)
• Payment/admission policies

NIP-66: Health Tests

Runs six independent health tests:

Test	What It Measures
RTT	WebSocket round-trip time in milliseconds
SSL	Certificate validity, expiration date, issuer chain
DNS	Resolution time, resolved IP addresses, DNSSEC status
Geo	Country, city, ASN, coordinates (MaxMind GeoIP)
Net	Autonomous System number, ISP name, network prefix
HTTP	HTTP status code, response headers, redirect chain

Result Storage

Each test produces a Metadata object with a specific MetadataType. Metadata is content-addressed: the SHA-256 hash of the canonical JSON data field becomes the id. Same data always produces the same id, providing automatic deduplication.

Results are stored via relay_metadata_insert_cascade, which atomically inserts across relay, metadata, and relay_metadata tables.

Event Publishing

When configured with Nostr keys, the Monitor publishes monitoring results as Nostr events:

• Kind 10166 — replaceable relay monitoring event
• Kind 30166 — parameterized replaceable relay monitoring event

These events are broadcast to configured relays, allowing other Nostr clients to consume health data.

Configuration

config/services/monitor.yaml

interval: 600  # seconds between cycles

processing:
  chunk_size: 200
  allow_insecure: false
  compute:
    nip11_info: true
    nip66_rtt: true
    nip66_ssl: true
    nip66_geo: true
    nip66_net: true
    nip66_dns: true
    nip66_http: true

networks:
  clearnet:
    timeout: 30
    max_tasks: 100
  tor:
    enabled: true
    timeout: 90
    max_tasks: 10
    proxy_url: socks5://tor:9050

geo:
  city_database_path: static/GeoLite2-City.mmdb
  asn_database_path: static/GeoLite2-ASN.mmdb
  geohash_precision: 9

Usage

# Run continuously
python -m bigbrotr monitor

# Run a single monitoring cycle
python -m bigbrotr monitor --once

# With debug logging for troubleshooting
python -m bigbrotr monitor --log-level DEBUG

Metrics

The Monitor exposes Prometheus metrics on port 8003:

• service_counter{name="relays_checked"} — total health checks performed
• service_counter{name="nip11_success"} — successful NIP-11 fetches
• service_counter{name="events_published"} — monitoring events broadcast
• cycle_duration_seconds — time per monitoring cycle