Tech I'm running a Tor Relay

[johnnyloadproductions]

Pretty easy to do it. Run it on a digital ocean droplet or even in your house (I'd recommend configuring the bandwidth in that case).

Here's the initial output, the only bandwidth so far is the Tor network testing my configs

Log:


Bandwidth:


So awesome!

Of course it's a liability in my mind so I'll shut it down when I wake up tomorrow.
Digital ocean doesn't like it though they have it included in their mirror repositories when installing packages. They just forewarn you that they'll shut you down should there be any problems.

In the meantime while I'm recharging in my sleep I'll know that I'll be helping people escape the fear of terrorists as they write about them, or those that decide to buy drugs online, or... some things I don't even want to think about...

[johnnyloadproductions]

Meh, looks like a new relay is initially boring: The lifecycle of a new relay | The Tor Blog

Phase one: unmeasured (days 0-3).
When your relay first starts, it does a bandwidth self-test: it builds four circuits into the Tor network and back to itself, and then sends 125KB over each circuit. This step bootstraps Tor's passive bandwidth measurement system, which estimates your bandwidth as the largest burst you've done over a 10 second period. So if all goes well, your first self-measurement is 4*125K/10 = 50KB/s. Your relay publishes this number in your relay descriptor.
The directory authorities list your relay in the network consensus, and clients get good performance (and balance load across the network) by choosing relays proportional to the bandwidth number listed in the consensus.
Originally, the directory authorities would just use whatever bandwidth estimate you claimed in your relay descriptor. As you can imagine, that approach made it cheap for even a small adversary to attract a lot of traffic by simply lying. In 2009, Mike Perry deployed the "bandwidth authority" scripts, where a group of fast computers around the Internet (called bwauths) do active measurements of each relay, and the directory authorities adjust the consensus bandwidth up or down depending on how the relay compares to other relays that advertise similar speeds. (Technically, we call the consensus number a "weight" rather than a bandwidth, since it's all about how your relay's number compares to the other numbers, and once we start adjusting them they aren't really bandwidths anymore.)
The bwauth approach isn't ungameable, but it's a lot better than the old design. Earlier this year we plugged another vulnerability by capping your consensus weight to 20KB until a threshold of bwauths have an opinion about your relay â?? otherwise there was a several-day window where we would use your claimed value because we didn't have anything better to use.
So that's phase one: your new relay gets basically no use for the first few days of its life because of the low 20KB cap, while it waits for a threshold of bwauths to measure it.

[EddyTheDog]

Isn't there a BW limit on DO? - If you go over will they charge you overages?..

[stoka]

what's that for?

[johnnyloadproductions]

Originally Posted by EddyTheDog

Isn't there a BW limit on DO? - If you go over will they charge you overages?..

I'm running the smallest droplet of 20GB, 512MB of RAM, and 1 TB of bandwidth.

From Pay-As-You-Grow Pricing:Q: Do you charge for bandwidth?A: Yes. Plans start with 1TB per month and increase incrementally. Once the monthly transfer limit has been exceeded it is $0.02 per GB thereafter. Only outbound transfer is counted.

From: Bandwidth quota | DigitalOcean

Originally Posted by stoka

what's that for?

The droplet I created helps with the overall Tor network bandwidth. That's a relay I have, not an exit node (which ends up on the website as the ip address).

Read up on it: Tor (anonymity network - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Personally I don't use Tor much at all, I've explored it out of curiosity much like I tested out running this relay.

I actually installed OpenVPN on a droplet with digital ocean so I'll log into it with a client if I'm ever at the mall from now on. I've had my CC info compromised once for being careless. Just $5 a month (:
It's the geek alternative to Hidemyass or another commercial VPN service.

[johnnyloadproductions]

Just over 7000 Tor relays, looks like.

Tor Metrics � Relays and bridges in the network

[klinton]

[CPA-Rush]

about 2 years ago i tried to install vpn for my old vps but for some reason couple of installations/settings did not work with that vps . i will try again with DO and see if it will work like a cake .

[ruff]

I was going to do that a few months ago, but Comcast capped my bandwidth. Greedy fucks.

[johnnyloadproductions]

Originally Posted by CPA-Rush

about 2 years ago i tried to install vpn for my old vps but for some reason couple of installations/settings did not work with that vps . i will try again with DO and see if it will work like a cake .

Manually installing a vpn seems complicated, I'll share a post on it.

Originally Posted by ruff

I was going to do that a few months ago, but Comcast capped my bandwidth. Greedy fucks.

Comcast seems to still cap people off at 250GB unless you have a business account?

I spend $80 with mediacom and have a limit of 2TB, I'm usually around 400-500GB a month.

[johnnyloadproductions]

Traffic is picking up. The first spike was the one in the graph of my first post so you can see the relation.

[ruff]

Originally Posted by johnnyloadproductions

Manually installing a vpn seems complicated, I'll share a post on it.



Comcast seems to still cap people off at 250GB unless you have a business account?

I spend $80 with mediacom and have a limit of 2TB, I'm usually around 400-500GB a month.

They're capping at 300 GB in my neighborhood now. No other option except ATT and they are not an option.

[CPA-Rush]

Originally Posted by johnnyloadproductions

Manually installing a vpn seems complicated, I'll share a post on it.

i have got it right ,thanks

[johnnyloadproductions]

Hello and welcome to Tor!

We've noticed that your Tor node Johnny (fingerprint: 3194 AD5A 2800 6140 033D 0B31 1023 81D4 3FD7 30F9) has been running long enough to be flagged as "stable". First, we would like to thank you for your contribution to the Tor network! As Tor grows, we require ever more nodes to improve browsing speed and reliability for our users. Your node is helping to serve the millions of Tor clients out there.

As a node operator, you may be interested in the Tor Weather service, which sends important email notifications when a node is down or your version is out of date. We here at Tor consider this service to be vitally important and greatly useful to all node operators. If you're interested in Tor Weather, please visit the following link to register:

Tor Weather - Home

You might also be interested in the tor-announce mailing list, which is a low volume list for announcements of new releases and critical security updates. To join, visit the following address:

tor-announce Info Page

Thank you again for your contribution to the Tor network! We won't send you any further emails unless you subscribe.

Disclaimer: If you have no idea why you're receiving this email, we sincerely apologize! You shouldn't hear from us again.

[johnnyloadproductions]

As a side note I also got a .onion site up and running. You just need to make sure you block all standard traffic from coming in and lock the server down (assuming you actually want it to be safe or more private).