Hi Dan,

>1 - Is it better for the network if the relay is active 24/7, even if sometimes it's much slower?

Generally according to the relay requirements a relay is considered useful if it can at least route 2MB/s or 16 MBit/s steadily.

However, I think you should get away with 1MB/s or 8 MBit/s.

> 2 - Will it negatively affect my relay's reputation if sometimes it's very slow?

The Tor authorities might reduce your middle probability, but you will not be punished in any way, and as soon as automatic bandwidth measurements confirm that you have more capacity available,

the authorities should start directing more traffic to your relay.

Some possible other ideas:

Rate-limit traffic to your relay using RelayBandwidthRate and RelayBandwidthBurst, but with only 5TB of monthly traffic you will end up rate-limiting it to somewhere in the 1,8 to 2MB/s range to not hit your traffic cap.

Or, just ask the provider for more bandwidth per month, generally now in 2023 it's pretty damn cheap.

All the best,

George

Hi all,

I've been running a middle relay on a VPS for about 2 months now. The provider limits the monthly data transferred to 5TB but does not charge for over-usage. Instead, the bandwidth is throttled to 1Mb/s after the limit is reached until the 1st of the next month.

I currently have AccountingMax set to 2.5 TB (since it's the max in each direction) and AccountingStart set to "month 1 00:00". Generally that 5TB limit is hit between the 15th and 17th of the month, causing the relay to go dormant until the 1st.

What I'm wondering is:

1 - Is it better for the network if the relay is active 24/7, even if sometimes it's much slower?
2 - Will it negatively affect my relay's reputation if sometimes it's very slow?

Thank you

--
Dan

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