<p>Increasing the number of validators can cause additional rounds to be needed for servers to reach consensus. This means that the consensus process could require more time.</p>

<p>The question is how much more? There are a lot of factors to consider; the network’s topology matters a lot. Generally, the operational metrics we’ve seen haven’t shown a statistically significant slowdown in the rate of ledger closed.</p>

<p>Quite the opposite in fact: improved validator connectivity has resulted in ledgers closing faster on average today than they had in the past. And this, despite the network’s diameter having increased.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-05-21T23:53:56.830Z
I ran simulations on this a few years ago. Granted the code was somewhat different then but the general idea should be roughly the same. Each time I increased the number of validators by a factor of 6 or 7, an extra round (taking about 0.6 seconds) was added to the consensus process. This has no effect on the network throughput (transactions per second) but it does increase latency (time between issuing a transaction and knowing that it succeeded). So going from 20 validators to 200 validators would be expected to add an extra second or so of latency.
David Schwartz
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-05-20T06:00:17.083Z
2019-05-20T06:00:17.083Z
Nik Bougalis
<p>All the validators need to reach consensus in ripple.</p>

<p>Would it that mean that, the more validators there are, the slower the process results?  </p>

<p>But the less validators there are, the more unsafe the consensus could result?</p>

<ripple><consensus>
Ripple: Validators
Juan
# Ripple: Validators

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-02-22)

All the validators need to reach consensus in ripple.

Would it that mean that, the more validators there are, the slower the process results?

But the less validators there are, the more unsafe the consensus could result?

**Tags:** ripple, consensus


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2019-05-20. Score: 1

Increasing the number of validators can cause additional rounds to be needed for servers to reach consensus. This means that the consensus process could require more time.

The question is how much more? There are a lot of factors to consider; the network’s topology matters a lot. Generally, the operational metrics we’ve seen haven’t shown a statistically significant slowdown in the rate of ledger closed.

Quite the opposite in fact: improved validator connectivity has resulted in ledgers closing faster on average today than they had in the past. And this, despite the network’s diameter having increased.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: I ran simulations on this a few years ago. Granted the code was somewhat different then but the general idea should be roughly the same. Each time I increased the number of validators by a factor of 6 or 7, an extra round (taking about 0.6 seconds) was added to the consensus process. This has no effect on the network throughput (transactions per second) but it does increase latency (time between issuing a transaction and knowing that it succeeded). So going from 20 validators to 200 validators would be expected to add an extra second or so of latency.  

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