I'm running a tor relay on some older hardware that I didn't want to discard when I could still put it so good use.

Some details of the box are:

I originally configured a single Tor instance IPv4 to run as a relay only (not as an exit, nor hosting a hidden service). I am also using the iptables rules from https://github.com/Enkidu-6/tor-ddos to minimize DDOS overhead (please advise if there are alternatives or additions to this).

My original config seemed ok until I started seeing my CPU and RAM maxing out consistently so I throttled back with the following in my torrc:

My RAM usage now is only about 50% or marginally less of my total available.

Here's how the metrics look lately:

As you can see, the throughput rated dropped in half (that's when the graph drops on 2023-02-09). However, the volume continued to decline.

Additionally, I'm unclear why my Middle Probability and Consensus Weight have both dropped to near 0%. Are those, in fact, where I want them?

I'm monitoring with nyx and see I get some traffic through with no apparent errors or warnings. I am NOT seeing the CPU spikes any longer but I don't think I'm giving the most with my hardware.

Questions:

1.) Is my tor service now misconfigured and not utilizing my hardware as best it could?

2.) Should my Consensus Weight and/or Middle Probability be higher?

3.) Should I consider running two tor instances?

Nyx log snippet:

07:59:32 [NOTICE] Heartbeat: DoS mitigation since startup: 7 circuits killed with too many cells, 591 circuits rejected, 2 marked addresses, 0 marked addresses for max queue, 0 same address concurrent
│   connections rejected, 0 connections rejected, 0 single hop clients refused, 19166 INTRODUCE2 rejected. [1 duplicate hidden]
│ 07:59:32 [NOTICE] Since startup we initiated 0 and received 0 v1 connections; initiated 0 and received 0 v2 connections; initiated 0 and received 0 v3 connections; initiated 0 and received 57982 v4
│   connections; initiated 116266 and received 356623 v5 connections.
│ 07:59:32 [NOTICE] Circuit handshake stats since last time: 3/3 TAP, 44849/44849 NTor. [1 duplicate hidden]
│ 07:59:32 [NOTICE] While not bootstrapping, fetched this many bytes: 194128391 (server descriptor fetch); 7140 (server descriptor upload); 17539422 (consensus network-status fetch); 1794 (authority cert
│   fetch); 2111765 (microdescriptor fetch)
│ 07:59:32 [NOTICE] Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 10 days 23:58 hours, with 179 circuits open. I've sent 34.83 GB and received 35.63 GB. I've received 444762 connections on IPv4 and 0 on IPv6. I've made
│   254336 connections with IPv4 and 0 with IPv6. [1 duplicate hidden]
│ 01:59:32 [NOTICE] Since startup we initiated 0 and received 0 v1 connections; initiated 0 and received 0 v2 connections; initiated 0 and received 0 v3 connections; initiated 0 and received 56651 v4
│   connections; initiated 114326 and received 347071 v5 connections.
│ 01:59:32 [NOTICE] While not bootstrapping, fetched this many bytes: 189431170 (server descriptor fetch); 7140 (server descriptor upload); 17131743 (consensus network-status fetch); 1794 (authority cert
│   fetch); 2068377 (microdescriptor fetch)

Thanks.

Relayer1974