The whiteconnections
option was added in 0.12 but later removed in #6374 because it was viewed as being redundant. While whitelisted connections can no longer be evicted as of that PR, whiteconnections
is still useful because it allows for new connections. For example, you could have a full node that you use as a gateway for several of your lightweight nodes, and in this case it may be impossible for you to connect to your gateway due to insufficient connection slots. whiteconnections solved this, but it is now removed.
Here’s a real-world complaint about this issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/540hoj/can_whitelistnetmask_free_up_a_connection/
Perhaps it would be more elegant to detect when a whitelisted peer is trying to connect when we have no more connection slots, and trigger the eviction of a non-whitelisted inbound peer in this case. But it’s probably easier to just re-add whiteconnections
.