Am 25.07.2012 um 21:31 schrieb delber:
On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 05:14:44PM -0400, Andrew Lewis wrote:
$100 is not going to cut it most likely, even for only 100 mbit traffic only. Most providers are really antsy about spam/DMCA reports, and aren't willing to deal with it for that cheap. I'd suspect that you are looking at the $150-$200+ range, at least in my experience.
We are a small group of people trying to setup something like torservers.net in France. We already made quite a bunch of contacts with a small amount of french ISP to ask them about hosting Tor exit relays. The list is long and we are not over yet. But here is what we know as today.
Je l'aime!
We already have ruled out the three major cheap hosting providers: OVH, Gandi and Dedibox. All of them are listed as bad ISPs on GoodBadISPs as prohibiting relays in their ToS. What is fun is that exit nodes running on their french IPs still account for 2.3353% of total P_exit (out of 2.6573% for all french exit nodes).
You can still go do it and try... but I suppose its not a good idea, once you run a relay big enough, with a policy that is open enough.
We have approached some other big commercial ISPs. It was not a formal inquiry, but they did not look very happy at the idea of hosting exit nodes.
You can also take a look at our wiki at torservers.net/wiki/. There is a list of ISPs that we've been in contact with, about Tor. We only run nodes with a small number of them. Thats also on our page/wiki. And Please, document your ISP contact, so that others don't have to redo that.
What we have found though, is that several smaller (not-for-profits or coops) ISPs would be happy to help the Tor network, provided there is a clear legal boundary. Something that our not-for-profit would create. The downside is that they are small, so the cost of their bandwidth is between a monthly 3€ and 10€ (when it is not even more) for each Mbps (95%ile). But they would stand in case of trouble. And some of them have an economic interest as using more bandwidth would lower their overall cost per Mbps.
Cool! There are also some of those, in Germany. Check them out, too. I don't know how cool they will be about Tor, or how much money they'll charge, though.
One of them is willing to sponsor some of the bandwidth, and it looks like a good place to start an initial set of nodes. But even with their sponsoring, $100/month will not cover hosting+bandwidth expenses.
True, but I think that you cannot expect Torproject or its sponsor to cover all of your costs. There are many, who are willing to give money to sponsor Tor nodes and they are the ones, who make sure, that the operators stay independent and diverse by giving their money or effort.
It might be something desirable though. If external funding does not cover all the costs, then we will have to campaign for other donations. A good habit, as it makes it more likely that at least some of the nodes would survive in case the external funding stops.
If money to kick this off is your problem I'm sure you'll find someone who will give it to you. Without a good sole like that, torservers wouldn't exist, either.
-- delber
If you have any questions, or if we can help you guys in any way or want to stay in contact just write me an email at this address or julian [at] torservers.net. Would be great!
slightly ot: Serez-vous au Congress cet hiver? Ce serait bien de vous y rencontrer et boire une biere ou mate. - Same applies to everyone else who will be there.
Julian