# Breaking down my LN routing

By [Shin Otsuka](https://paragraph.com/@shinotsuka) · 2021-11-16

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Since setting up [my LN node](https://amboss.space/node/028ca942be25308d5077811a2c2a3e18dcc25267d39ebff9081e3deb8124a45317) some months ago, I haven’t really taken time to understand how much sats were routed through which channels in my own node. Here I summarized some of the routing data that I pulled out from RTL. I hope this helps anyone who is new to/planning to start LN routing.

I took data from only the last 1 month of July 1–31 to minimize data pollution from some recent major changes that I made in channel capacity, # of channels, tx fee rates. Before, I only held a few high-fee channels as that worked well at that time. Now the times have changed…

The table below shows top 5 inbound and outbound channels in routing volume.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/c26c6969737212cf25858620750f9bcf5024697e0ca8e17e764fcc4cf56fba68.png)

Many are the major nodes that you might be familiar with. In many cases, when you open a channel, the sats flow is one-way and the balance gets stuck on the either end, and finding a channel with a stream in both ways is something important. For my node, nicehash seems to be the one. So do I want to open a larger channel with it or find another both-way node to diversify the stream? That is something I’m trying to find out.

[Diamond Hands](https://amboss.space/node/035b1ff29e8db1ba8f2a4f4f95db239b54069cb949b8cde329418e2a83da4f1b30) ranked 3rd in inbound is a node of a major, fast-growing Japanese LN community, where you can get some extra sats by opening a channel with it. Not much English information about the node, but I recommend you to connect with it if you want to get some routing from/to Japan.

60–70% of routing volume is concentrated in top 5 channels in my node. I believe that the more diversification leads to more routing, and I’m adding more channels to test the waters.

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1e2b730445cb92e7c1bb72aa270a2a5da57b393d30dcdd9a5ab54079e4fc96fd.png)

The breakdown of a number of tx by tx size. Yes, I really didn’t get any 1–10k sats tx. As far as what we see here, you better open a ~30–40k channel to experience routing, even if you want to start small.

I’m not sure how much this post can help your own routing as everyone is in a different part of the LN network, but it’s a little interesting to look into someone else’s routing, isn’t it?

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*Originally published on [Shin Otsuka](https://paragraph.com/@shinotsuka/breaking-down-my-ln-routing)*