Re: [tor-relays] "Relay info kit" for Tor exits at universities

On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 04:08:57 -0400 Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu> wrote:
Fast relays use lots of memory, which vastly worsens the effects of the "small TLB" problem inherent in all modern CPUs, so running a fast relay on a FreeBSD kernel with superpages support enabled is likely to reduce considerably the CPU load for the traffic served, which is more or less equivalent to increasing the traffic capacity for any given CPU speed. Superpages support has been available since 7.2 for i386 and amd64 platforms, but will likely be available on other platforms at some point. Support on another platform was supposed to appear in 9.0, IIRC, but I don't remember which (ia64?). I'm not sure what will be in later releases, but my understanding is that the kernel development team planned to add superpages support eventually to the rest of the FreeBSD-supported hardware platforms that are capable of it (not, for example, powerpc because that hardware does not support the multiple page sizes involved). Rather than risk triggering OS religious wars here, it might be better to limit OS recommendations to merely which to avoid because they have limitations likely to prevent successful operation of a fast exit node (e.g., non-server versions of Windows). The administrators of fast nodes already know what their current setups are and the current knowledge bases of their staffs are.
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Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG ********************************************************************** * Internet: bennett at cs.niu.edu * *--------------------------------------------------------------------* * "A well regulated and disciplined militia, is at all times a good * * objection to the introduction of that bane of all free governments * * -- a standing army." * * -- Gov. John Hancock, New York Journal, 28 January 1790 * **********************************************************************
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Scott Bennett