Nick:
I have a reasonable ADSL connection, and a little always-on server. The bandwidth is in the region of 2Mib/s down, something less up (maybe 256Kib/s). Is it useful for me to run a tor relay with this bandwidth? I'd like to run one which isn't an exit, at least for now.
Unless I'm reading Compass wrong, a relay with 256 Kib/s is likely to be selected as a middle node 1 time out of 10000 circuits, if not less…
So I'd say it is not useful for the network to add relays with so little bandwidth at the present times.
If not, am I correct in thinking that a bridge is an appropriate help? That's what I'm doing currently, but if a relay would be more useful I'd be very happy to do that.
It would be a slow bridge, but at least the likelihood it'll be of use is far greater than configuring a relay.
One other unrelated(ish) question: I'm in the UK, where the idea of censorship isn't resisted as strongly as it ought to be, and as a result my internet connection is subject to a smallish amount of censorship: whatever is on the secret IWF blacklist plus the pirate bay. Does this mean that running an exit node from a home connection here at some point in the future would not be helpful? Or only if all HTTP(S) was blocked (as the IWF blacklist is secret there's presumably no way to tell the tor network what is inaccessible from this node).
Running exit nodes from home connection is usually a bad idea. In case of abuses, law enforcement agencies are likely to believe that whoever lives there is responsible for the abuses.