How can I receive live time Algorand transactions?

Hello, I am interested in monitoring Algorand transactions. I have been running a participation node and monitoring the packet exchanges between my node and the network. Unlike when I conducted similar monitoring for Bitcoin, I am unable to observe transaction packets in either my node’s log or Wireshark while participating in the network.

How can I see the live transactions in Algorand? Which type of node should I run to receive the transaction packets?

Hey, welcome to the forum.

If you’re running a participation node then you will absolutely be receiving all the transactions propagating across the network, as you may need to propose a block and include them. However if you’re just a regular node you may want to enable the config.json parameter ForceFetchTransactions which will make sure you retrieve all the transactions.

As for viewing these transactions, you can call the /v2/transactions/pending endpoint on the node to get a list of all the pending transactions. As for using wireshark you may need to research that yourself, as I’m not aware of any existing tutorials or guides on using it with Algorand traffic.