Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 05:40:00 +0200
From: Moritz Bartl <moritz@torservers.net>
To: tor-relays@lists.torproject.org
Subject: Re: [tor-relays] Estimating the value and cost of the Tor
network

Hi,

Prices vary widely across different countries. We pay between $400 and
$1500 per Gbit/s per month in "popular and cheap locations". In a
scenario where we want to grow the network and at least keep the current
geographical diversity (or even grow it), we'd have to at least equally
strengthen less fortunate locations.

The list of the top 20 countries [0] contains countries such as Russia,
Poland, Norway and Hungary, where international bandwidth is quite
expensive. Hopefully someone from this list can help us compile or find
estimates for pricing per country. It would be interesting to learn the
prices even for mid-size (~50-100Mbit/s+) relays in any country outside
of the top five countries, even more so for crazy places that don't make
the top 20.

Another factor that we should not ignore is that, while it may be
possible to find a set of ISPs that allow mid-size exit relays, it gets
harder the more traffic you push, because of the additional workload
(and scariness) for the ISP from complaints.

[0] https://compass.torproject.org/

--
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/

Re: crazy places that don't make the top 20

I've noticed that most of the Tor network is concentrated in the northern hemisphere, particularly Europe and North America. I assume the distribution of authorities is similar.

Apart from China, no Asia-Pacific country makes the top 20 in Tor compass.[1] And no southern hemisphere country makes the top 20 at all.

The first Asia-Pacific countries after China are Japan at #29, then Singapore at #37.

And unless I've missed something, the first southern hemisphere country is Australia at #42.

Details aside, I'd love to see more routers and exits in countries other than the top 4 (Germany, France, Netherlands, United States). This helps spread failure risk, sovereign risk, and the risk from 3 letter agencies and the like.

And it would make Tor faster for those in the southern hemisphere, Africa, and the Asia-pacific.

But I don't know how much hope there is for this - I've tried to find pricing in Australia, and the figures I've found are:

$8000 per month for 100Mbps.[2]

$1500 per month for 25Mbps.[3]

$800 per month for 10Mbps.[4]

That seems ridiculously pricey…

I'd rather wait for the National Broadband Network and run one on 100Mbps fibre at 1% of the price.[5] (Except bandwidth would not be guaranteed on a "home"-style plan.)

Time to find a sympathetic university?

Tim

[1]: https://compass.torproject.org/?family=&ases=&exits=all_relays&by_country=True&top=-1#?exit_filter=all_relays&links&sort=cw&sort_reverse&country=&top=-1&by_country

[2]: http://www.intervolve.com.au/datacentre/

[3]: http://www.exetel.com.au/corporate/ip-transit-colocation

[4]: https://www.xhostsolutions.com.au/services/dedicated-server-unmetered.cfm

[5]: http://delimiter.com.au/2014/04/03/unlimited-100mbps-89-99-tpg-equals-top-nbn-plan/