Running a simple personal lightning node differs from running a commercial routing node. Personal nodes are usually used by their operators, friends and family. They tend to have just a few channels, enough to ensure reliable sending and receiving of their personal payments.

Routing nodes, on the other hand, tend to be more complex than their counterpart. Routing nodes are used by the financial world for international payments and can have hundreds, if not thousands, of channels.

In this case, an efficient node can stand out among the thousands out there. And in order to increase the efficiency of your routing node, you will need to carefully select nodes that fit your criteria of an effective routing node.

You can use the following questions to determine whether to open a channel to a certain node or not. Of course, there’s no right or wrong way of doing this but this is a good way of assessing.

• What is the ratio of your channel’s capacity to the peer’s overall capacity?
• How many “good peers” is your potential peer connected to?
• How many channels does your potential peer have?
• How large is your potential peer’s total capacity?
• How old is your potential peer?
• What’s your potential peer’s rankings on all the different lightning explorers out there?
• What are your potential peer’s fees?
• What is the average age of your potential peer’s channels?
• What is the average capacity of your all your potential peer’s channels?
• What is your potential peer’s hopness rank?
• What is your potential peer’s betweenness rank?
• What is your potential peer’s hubness rank?
• How is your potential peers’s reachability?
• What is your potential peer’s betweenness rank?