On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Rob van der Hoeven robvanderhoeven@ziggo.nl wrote:
Hi folks,
Hi,
Bridges serve as "unknown" entry points to the TOR network. For this, part of the TOR network nodes are reserved and unlisted. This is not good for the performance of the network, and because the network is relatively small i think the unlisted-nodes strategy will only be a short term solution.
Roger wrote a good blog post about strategies for getting more bridge addresses: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/strategies-getting-more-bridge-addresses (you may have seen this already, it was written three months ago).
At the moment i'm working on my own FreedomBox. From this work i got the following idea: Why not use the DNAT function of a router to forward TOR traffic to a TOR node? This way you don't need unlisted nodes anymore. A router-bridge does not have to be a full TOR node....
Unfortunately the standard DNAT functionality of most routers only support DNAT from the internet to internal addresses. So you need modified firmware to make this work. Maybe a (slightly modified?) version of OpenWRT will work.
Have you heard about the Torouter project? We are currently working on two versions; the DreamPlug for technical users who don't mind doing some hacking on their own, and the Excito B3 for non-tech users. We have documented the project here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/Torouter - Maybe this is something you'd like to help with?
Router-bridges have a second advantage over real TOR nodes. They can be easily moved. If a router-bridge gets blocked, you can simply give the router-bridge to a friend.
You could also just change the IP address of the Tor relay (probably easier to do if it's a VPS than if you have it at home).