Hej Eldalië,
thanks for your answer.
Tor project runs campaigns for running more bridges [1-3] because there was/is (?) a shortage and/or countries changed their censorship policy (e. g. Russia). So I'd say the statement in the FAQ is a little bit to simple. At different times a shortage of one or the other node might occur. :)
I think the answer might also depend on what kind of servers you are able to run. E. g. a server in a cloud/with a hoster where you can spin instances up/down on a regular basis (weekly/monthly?) and change the IP in this process, might be good for bridges in case they got blocked by a censor (no idea on how long a usual bridge is usable before it gets blocked in parts of the world). If you are able to run the node for many years with the same IP addressing, maybe a non-bridge would be better, so the node might become a fallback-authority node one day.
If you don't use HiddenServiceSingleHopMode for you onion services, six tor nodes are in between the visitor and the server which results in a lot of bandwidth usage in the tor network. So some non-exits might also be handy in case onion service usage picks up.
If you take a look at https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth-flags.html it seems to me like there is much more advertised bandwidth than consumed bandwidth for all flags. So maybe more bridges is the answer?
But I really cannot tell because I don't have enough insights and so I just went with bridges (time to be blocked for a usual bridge would be really interesting to know if/when I should convert the bridges to regular nodes or change IP addressing).
Thanks and have a great weekend!
Fran
[1] https://blog.torproject.org/run-tor-bridges-defend-open-internet/ [2] https://blog.torproject.org/run-a-bridge-campaign/ [3] https://blog.torproject.org/wrapping-up-bridges-campaign/
On 2/4/22 10:40, Eldalië via tor-relays wrote:
Hello there.
And generally, what's more needed atm: bridge, non-exit, exit or snowflake?
I'm not an expert at all, but the most needed type of relay is exit ([1]) and I suppose always will be, as they are the most prone to raise legal issues ([1]) and have the highest requirements ([2]). Also, to my understanding, if there were many exit nodes but guard or middle were missing, exit nodes would be used for the first two hops as well, so if you have enough resources and you will to I'd say you should go with an exit node. As for the question about bridges I'm a newbie, so I'll leave the answer to someone with some expertise :).
Eldalië