- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Relay or Obfuscated Bridge?
by Richard Budd 02 Aug '13

02 Aug '13

I have several Tor relays running on VPS providers around the world (the 7 bucks a month kind). Most have around 5 to 6 meg a second bandwidth available. Would it be more useful for the Tor system to change a few of them over to obfuscated bridges?

1 0

Tor bridge on Amazon not doing much
by Shawn A. Miller 02 Aug '13

02 Aug '13

I've been running a Tor bridge on the Amazon EC2 cloud computing platform (per instructions at https://cloud.torproject.org/) since July 27, and while the bridge is up and running according to the logs, there doesn't seem to be much traffic running through it, i.e., latest logs indicate Tor uptime is 2 days 12 hours with 2 circuits open; 6.6 MB sent and 45.75 MB received. Have I somehow managed to misconfigure the bridge or is this normal? Best, Shawn

6 7

Running exit-node in Germany
by Matthias Redies 02 Aug '13

02 Aug '13

Hello, I want to run an exit-node through mit home connection. Has anyone experience with running a Tor-Relay in Germany( Bavaria)? Are there known cases of police raids? Is there a list of lawyers which work with the torproject which should be called in case of a raid? Has anyone had sucsess with talking to the police prior to setting up the exit-node? If so, to which departmed did you talk to? Yours Matthias

11 18

Home broadband - worth running a relay?
by Nick 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

Hi there, I have a reasonable ADSL connection, and a little always-on server. The bandwidth is in the region of 2Mib/s down, something less up (maybe 256Kib/s). Is it useful for me to run a tor relay with this bandwidth? I'd like to run one which isn't an exit, at least for now. If not, am I correct in thinking that a bridge is an appropriate help? That's what I'm doing currently, but if a relay would be more useful I'd be very happy to do that. One other unrelated(ish) question: I'm in the UK, where the idea of censorship isn't resisted as strongly as it ought to be, and as a result my internet connection is subject to a smallish amount of censorship: whatever is on the secret IWF blacklist plus the pirate bay. Does this mean that running an exit node from a home connection here at some point in the future would not be helpful? Or only if all HTTP(S) was blocked (as the IWF blacklist is secret there's presumably no way to tell the tor network what is inaccessible from this node). Thanks in advance, Nick

12 23

Diagnosing "relay unresponsive" messages
by Gordon Morehouse 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

So, I've got my relay back up on a Raspberry Pi and I'm working on figuring out the optimizations I made to it, and continuing to tune it. Out of the box these machines have some difficulty even offering a couple Mbps, but they can be greatly improved. I will post all details when done. I see a fair amount of this, much less than after some tweaks, but it still happens: 20:27:36 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay resumed [1 duplicate hidden] 20:27:30 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay unresponsive (last heartbeat: Wed Jul 31 20:27:19 2013) 19:50:57 [ARM_NOTICE] Relay unresponsive (last heartbeat: Wed Jul 31 19:50:4 This often happens at the same time as 'arm' (the monitoring program) may stutter, fail to render a few frames, then 'catch up' or redraw the screen. I'm trying to figure out what's going on so I can prevent it. It doesn't always correlate with traffic - it happens more often when there's more traffic but can happen even with very little. Tor is taking about 10% RAM, there's plenty free, and load is under 1.0. Best, -Gordon M.

1 0

What to do about port scans?
by Steve Snyder 01 Aug '13

01 Aug '13

I wouldn't have thought that the Tor network was fast enough for port scanning, but apparently it is. I have recently seen a rash of SSH port scanning (or so my ISP reports). What can/should I do about this? I know I can limit the rate of connections using iptables. What's the consensus on this? Is this considered advisable, or a breach of expected exit node behavior? Do I have any options other than iptables to restrict the rate of port 22 connection attempts? Thanks.

3 3

Re: [tor-relays] Home broadband - worth running a relay?
by ROCKsolid69r＠gmail.com 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

1 0

Re: [tor-relays] Home broadband - worth running a relay?
by ROCKsolid69r＠gmail.com 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

1 0

VPN termination on relays
by grarpamp 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

> Mosh is great, but it still relies exclusively on UDP, right? > So no "over Tor"... Somewhat related to things that don't work via exits... So who wants to offer VPN termination as part of their exit service? User tunnels VPN to you, you give back a bound port, or a natted 10 address, somethings of that sort.

1 0

Fwd: Computer requirements for a modest (15-20Mbs) relay?
by Zack Weinberg 31 Jul '13

31 Jul '13

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 12:35 PM, Andy Isaacson <adi(a)hexapodia.org> wrote: > Yes, there are cases of law enforcement seizing all computer gear from a > house with a exit node -- not just the exit node computer. Most > recently in Austria in a child porn investigation. [...] We did some operational planning for this risk, in conjunction with the university legal and IT departments, when we set up the CMU Tor exit. The machine is in a cube farm filled with other equipment that people need for their work; this is because we want to have immediate physical access to it in an emergency, and anywhere else we could put it would interfere with that. However, it has its own dedicated IP address, it runs absolutely no other services, it is clearly labeled both in DNS and on the physical box, and there's nothing else on the table it sits on. The hope is that this will be sufficient to persuade law enforcement to seize *only* that machine, if it comes to it. Of course, it helps as much or more to have the equipment under the aegis of an organization with lawyers already briefed and on tap, and that has trained all the staff to call legal *before doing anything else* when the police show up. Also, the greater operational threat is having the plug pulled by one's connectivity provider. I personally would not risk having an exit node in my house for that reason alone. zw

3 3