@Ivan
Some best practices definitely would be awesome to have about running on common (embedded) hardware. Clear notification like "your Commodore 64 is to slow to be a good relay" would also be useful.
I agree about the need for guidelines but I disagree about the content of the guidelines that are needed. The data I see so far, including your report of a Pi with 7000 connections, is a clear indication that minimal hardware capabilities are NOT the guidelines that are needed (unless a relay with 7000 connections is still considered "harmful" or "useless").
My own Pi-based relay https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/707A9A3358E0D8653089AF32A097570A96400C... has just reached 1300 connections; CPU utilization: practically zero; memory utilization: 14.5%. The increase from 500 to 1300 connections required memory utilization increase of just 2%, from 12.5% to 14.5%. Clearly, hardware of the $35 Pi has absolutely nothing to do with residential relays being useful or not, save the (recently reported here) anomaly of an operator who has symmetric BW of 160 mbps to the home.
So guidelines on hardware are evidently not needed for "normal" residential ISP bandwidth: it has been amply demonstrated that even a dirt cheap Pi is not the bottleneck, no need to spend further effort on this until the REAL bottleneck is resolved: the network.
To continue the story, the above relay of mine with 1300 connections has consensus BW rating of 38 (thirty eight). Why? Who knows. I get zero feedback on the reason for this.
To further continue the story, my 2nd relay https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/31B8C4C4F1C78F923BD906769297B15A428C4A... that currently has about the same Atlas-measured BW as the first relay (132 vs 153 KB/s) and is based on exactly the same hardware and software, is clinically dead with almost no connections and BW rating of 13. Why? Who knows.
What is needed is a standardized feedback on WHY the relay has such a low rating. This could cause at least part of the operators to take care of the bottleneck (eg moving the relay to another location, or abandoning the home relay and replacing it with a hosted one). And if the home relay is indeed as harmful as some people here think, the recommendation should be issued to shut it down, instead of leaving it hanging there doing nothing or even harming Tor. Such feedback could significantly improve the quality and effectiveness of Tor.
Based on the discussion here, the people who run Dirauths and bwauths know very well (or at least can easily find out) the reasons for relays getting low rating - why not automate the communication of the reasons to relay operators in clear, unequivocal and actionable terms? I get the feeling that people are trying to be "politically correct" here and it's a pity (although they DO respond fully and frankly when asked a direct question).
Rana
On 24 Dec 2016, at 18:56, Rana ranaventures@gmail.com wrote:
...
What is needed is a standardized feedback on WHY the relay has such a low rating. This could cause at least part of the operators to take care of the bottleneck (eg moving the relay to another location, or abandoning the home relay and replacing it with a hosted one). And if the home relay is indeed as harmful as some people here think, the recommendation should be issued to shut it down, instead of leaving it hanging there doing nothing or even harming Tor. Such feedback could significantly improve the quality and effectiveness of Tor.
Based on the discussion here, the people who run Dirauths and bwauths know very well (or at least can easily find out) the reasons for relays getting low rating - why not automate the communication of the reasons to relay operators in clear, unequivocal and actionable terms?
You could try compiling a FAQ from the answers you and others have received.
Or, someone could volunteer to create a relay performance analysis tool. But it might not be as simple as you think. There are many variables, and it's hard to work out what's actually happening to a relay without access to the relay itself.
I get the feeling that people are trying to be "politically correct" here and it's a pity (although they DO respond fully and frankly when asked a direct question).
Perhaps some of us struggle to answer similar questions in the same level of detail all the time. I know I do. It takes a lot of time to elicit the level of detail needed to provide good answers.
Also when we're not polite, the discussion escalates into long threads with few interesting posts. So most of us learn to avoid that.
T
-- Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)
teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n xmpp: teor at torproject dot org ------------------------------------------------------------------------
@teor I hereby volunteer to maintain a FAQ for operators of small relays (or noob operators). Which means I would be watching this list, generating the Q&A and from time to time alerting this list to the appearance of new questions and answers, to allow knowledgeable people to do quality control. And/or inviting people to convert their answers on this list to the FAQ answers. This would relieve them from answering the same question over and over again and reduce the influx of questions from noobs (like myself :)). I believe this would also strengthen the community and reduce the frustration of small relay operators and - who knows? - even lead to advancements in Tor design to make better use of them.
Caveat: I need someone (Tor project people) to create the Wiki on the site and let me admin it. There is already a severely underused wiki with a couple of answers that someone once referred me to, with a disastrously difficult captcha that I could not pass (why have captcha on a Wiki in the first place is beyond me)
-----Original Message----- From: tor-relays [mailto:tor-relays-bounces@lists.torproject.org] On Behalf Of teor Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2017 8:26 AM To: tor-relays@lists.torproject.org Subject: Re: [tor-relays] What's a "useful" relay?
On 24 Dec 2016, at 18:56, Rana < mailto:ranaventures@gmail.com
ranaventures@gmail.com> wrote:
...
What is needed is a standardized feedback on WHY the relay has such a low
rating. This could cause at least part of the operators to take care of the bottleneck (eg moving the relay to another location, or abandoning the home relay and replacing it with a hosted one). And if the home relay is indeed as harmful as some people here think, the recommendation should be issued to shut it down, instead of leaving it hanging there doing nothing or even harming Tor. Such feedback could significantly improve the quality and effectiveness of Tor.
Based on the discussion here, the people who run Dirauths and bwauths know
very well (or at least can easily find out) the reasons for relays getting low rating - why not automate the communication of the reasons to relay operators in clear, unequivocal and actionable terms?
You could try compiling a FAQ from the answers you and others have received.
Or, someone could volunteer to create a relay performance analysis tool. But it might not be as simple as you think. There are many variables, and it's hard to work out what's actually happening to a relay without access to the relay itself.
I get the feeling that people are trying to be "politically correct" here
and it's a pity (although they DO respond fully and frankly when asked a direct question).
Perhaps some of us struggle to answer similar questions in the same level of detail all the time. I know I do. It takes a lot of time to elicit the level of detail needed to provide good answers.
Also when we're not polite, the discussion escalates into long threads with few interesting posts. So most of us learn to avoid that.
T
-- Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)
teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n xmpp: teor at torproject dot org ------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 3 Jan 2017, at 17:57, Rana ranaventures@gmail.com wrote:
@teor I hereby volunteer to maintain a FAQ for operators of small relays (or noob operators). Which means I would be watching this list, generating the Q&A and from time to time alerting this list to the appearance of new questions and answers, to allow knowledgeable people to do quality control. And/or inviting people to convert their answers on this list to the FAQ answers. This would relieve them from answering the same question over and over again and reduce the influx of questions from noobs (like myself J). I believe this would also strengthen the community and reduce the frustration of small relay operators and – who knows? – even lead to advancements in Tor design to make better use of them.
I would appreciate that, but please learn some mailing list etiquette first. Otherwise, your contributions may be ignored by many people on the list.
Some examples: * make sure each email adds something valuable to the conversation * structure your emails well: * learn how to bottom-post, even if your email client doesn't support it * learn how to quote others' emails to provide context to your response * try to write succinctly * keep the volume of your emails down: * write one response to a thread each day * search for similar threads before starting a new one * wait until an active thread is finished before starting a new one
Caveat: I need someone (Tor project people) to create the Wiki on the site and let me admin it.
Demonstrate you can do the things above, and I'll gladly set this up for you.
There is already a severely underused wiki with a couple of answers that someone once referred me to, with a disastrously difficult captcha that I could not pass (why have captcha on a Wiki in the first place is beyond me)
Forum spam.
T
-- Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)
teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n xmpp: teor at torproject dot org ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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