Cheap Servers? There MUST be a catch
Worried about dominance of OVH for relays and exits? How about Google! Setting up a fast server is SO cheap on their https://cloud.google.com/ platform, it is tempting to set up relays, if not exits there. Looking at their T&Cs they do not seem to mention TOR or banning running a proxy, but a generic list of don't do bad things. I have two ubuntu servers doing running other programmes on there now, and so far cost me $0.78 with fixed IP4 addresses. I have not worked out how to attach IPv6 yet. Of course set DNS of the machines not to be Google's So tell me why this is such a bad idea. Gerry
On Sun, 8 Nov 2020 22:21:00 -0000 "Dr Gerard Bulger" <gerard@bulger.co.uk> wrote:
Yes there is a catch, the bandwidth pricing. It is common for a fast 100 Mbit relay to transfer close to its maximum possible 30 TB/month. On Google Cloud this will cost you at least $2150/month. https://cloud.google.com/network-tiers/pricing#standard-pricing There is a reason for OVH's dominance, on OVH you can do the above for $3.5 -- With respect, Roman
Hi Gerry and all, On Sun, 2020-11-08 at 22:21 +0000, Dr Gerard Bulger wrote:
Of course set DNS of the machines not to be Google’s
Just a digression for privacy understanding - I'm not sure about the following, confirmation needed. (Google) DNS would even not be triggered in the context of running a non-exit Tor relay, as only IPs seems to be shared by relays, authorities, and final Tor users. I only see a DNS reference in torrc at "Address" field but (I would bet this is first option): - either it is resolved by your machine, so as a non privacy related data (because it is yourself related) - either it is resolved once (or many times) by the network but is no more Google DNS related. Moreover Google (as any provider) could even evesdrop (uncyphered) DNS messages you exchange with your DNS provider, or list any IP address which exchanged with your host. So my point was that DNS does not matter as: 1/ Tor does not use DNS (confirmation needed) 2/ It is pointless to try to keep DNS private when you entrust all your machine to them (but using encyphered DNS would be slightly better) Moreover, Google already has a lot of information and I would just advice not to correlate any of their services with Tor. OVH is bad choice because of dominating bandwidth, but to my mind using Google would be worst. -- Croax
Not necessarily under a dollar, but check out the torpids sets of relays. Torpids has identified a number of hosts that offer unlimited/unmetered bandwidth for a fixed price each month: https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/torpids As far as servers that are actually under $1 USD/month, there are a decent number of hosts in Russia that offer VPS services for near $1 USD/month. However, the reliability on a lot of these services are abysmal (some of them oversell to the extent that VPS servers are constantly in swapped/hibernation, than actually running. You'd need to maintain an active SSH connection from another device just to keep the server awake. G-Core labs is held in fairly high regard in some circles, and is fairly cheap if you pay in Rubles (with a no forex fee credit card) but I have no experience with that particular host. tontu On 2020-11-09 11:37 a.m., niftybunny wrote:
Thanks everyone for telling me what I suspected. The lowest spec machine is free, and they start you off with $300 credit I have not dug out their usage/bandwidth pricing, but suspect that is another catch as explained on this forum! I think I can afford the $20 or so with proper ISPs! Gerry On Mon, 9 Nov 2020 at 19:43, tontu <tontu@nisse.xyz> wrote:
participants (6)
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Croax -
Dr Gerard Bulger -
Gerard Bulger
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niftybunny -
Roman Mamedov -
tontu