andrew reid reidandrew91@gmail.com wrote:

Hey there, I am running a tor relay off an old samsung phone. When I first started the relay, my observed bandwidth was around 4.5MB/s. It was running for around 7 days and had the stable and HSdir flag. After a few problems with IP6 and being overloaded (thought this was a problem on my end, not a DDoS attack) I restarted the phone and edited the config file to take away IPv6. It has now been running for 7 days again but my observed bandwidth is only 1.6MB/s now and I still haven't gotten the stable and HSdir flag back. How long would this take or is it just a problem on my end ? and for the bandwidth, my connection is still the same and hasn't changed. Is this just something that takes time to come back like the flags. This is my first relay so I would like to understand a bit more. Thank you

Stable, AFAIK, still depends upon something like the average uptime of the current instance and the previous instance relative to the corresponding averages among all other relays. Assignment of the Stable flag is made to relays above a certain percentile rank of those averages. Fast used to depend upon the maximum throughput speed allowed by the Bandwidth* and RelayBandwith* entries in the torrc file. More than some minimum bandwidth was required for assignment of the flag to a relay. HSDir used to depend upon its torrc option not being set to 0. That option was removed some time ago and is now apparently solely under the control of the Authority relays. *HOWEVER*, both a randomization factor appears to have been added three or four years ago to the Authority relays' algorithm used to decide whether to award Fast and to award HSDir. Now either flag comes and goes like birds landing on tree limbs and later departing, often for no reason obvious to humans. My relay has many times been up for one or more months. During those times Fast and HSDir have been repeatedly assigned to it and lifted from it and perhaps reassigned to it, often only a few hours apart. The only consistencies I have seen are that 1) the first time a tor relay is assigned the HSDir flag is after at least 96 hours of uptime in the current instance, though it may not happen until much later than 96 hours and 2) HSDir does not appear ever to be assigned unless Fast is also assigned. AFAIK, the tor project has never offered an explanation for the addition/intrusion of this randomization factor. Frankly, I think it is a destabilizing factor to the tor relay network and doubly so for hidden services activities, and it must add to overall tor traffic to have to restock the hidden service directory servers so often.

Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG ********************************************************************** * Internet: bennett at sdf.org *xor* bennett at freeshell.org * *--------------------------------------------------------------------* * "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 * **********************************************************************