DigitalOcean, cheap VPS that's ok with middle relays
FYI, I just discovered a VPS provider DigitalOcean, and they seem fine with people running non-exit nodes: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/tor The cheapest plan is $5/month (256mb ram, 1 core, 20gb drive) with unlimited bandwidth. They give you New York and Amsterdam IP addresses. I haven't tried running a relay on it so I don't know how much bandwidth you can practically use, but it looks promising. -- Micah Lee https://twitter.com/micahflee
Hi Micah, On 08.01.2013 19:47, Micah Lee wrote:
FYI, I just discovered a VPS provider DigitalOcean, and they seem fine with people running non-exit nodes:
Thanks for the hint. In general, I don't see why VPS providers would not allow internal Tor relaying, and I would not even bother to ask first. Interesting values to know about VPS providers are bandwidth allowance ("unlimited" is quite obviously a marketing term; often, limits can only be discovered by some months of experience) and [socket/numfile] limitations. Support is often reluctant to provide such values before ordering. A good way to characterize VPS offers is to post the output of "cat /proc/user_beancounters". -- Moritz Bartl https://www.torservers.net/
On 08.01.2013, at 20:51, Moritz Bartl <moritz@torservers.net> wrote:
Hi Micah,
On 08.01.2013 19:47, Micah Lee wrote:
FYI, I just discovered a VPS provider DigitalOcean, and they seem fine with people running non-exit nodes:
Thanks for the hint. In general, I don't see why VPS providers would not allow internal Tor relaying, and I would not even bother to ask first. Interesting values to know about VPS providers are bandwidth allowance ("unlimited" is quite obviously a marketing term; often, limits can only be discovered by some months of experience) and [socket/numfile] limitations. Support is often reluctant to provide such values before ordering. A good way to characterize VPS offers is to post the output of "cat /proc/user_beancounters".
that seems to only exist on OpenVZ but not on fully virtualized hosts.
-- Moritz Bartl https://www.torservers.net/ _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Andreas I've tried to contact you a number of times in the past few months. I'm in the process of starting a torservers.net entity here in Iceland for the express purpose of hosting fast exits. I'd like to know how much it will cost to colocate an exit at Datacell. -kupo
On Tuesday 08 January 2013 20:51:52 Moritz Bartl wrote:
Thanks for the hint. In general, I don't see why VPS providers would not allow internal Tor relaying, and I would not even bother to ask first. Interesting values to know about VPS providers are bandwidth allowance ("unlimited" is quite obviously a marketing term; often, limits can only be discovered by some months of experience) and [socket/numfile] limitations. Support is often reluctant to provide such values before ordering. A good way to characterize VPS offers is to post the output of "cat /proc/user_beancounters".
Before using dedicated server to run Tor I tested several VPS provider like Host Europe, Server4you and other smaller VPS hoster. For all VPS the maximal number of concurrent TCP connection was so small, that it made no sense to run Tor on it. So VPS provider guarantee unlimited Bandwidth but other limitations make these offers useless. Regards, Torland
Moritz Bartl:
Hi Micah,
On 08.01.2013 19:47, Micah Lee wrote:
FYI, I just discovered a VPS provider DigitalOcean, and they seem fine with people running non-exit nodes:
Thanks for the hint. In general, I don't see why VPS providers would not allow internal Tor relaying, and I would not even bother to ask first. Interesting values to know about VPS providers are bandwidth allowance ("unlimited" is quite obviously a marketing term; often, limits can only be discovered by some months of experience) and [socket/numfile] limitations. Support is often reluctant to provide such values before ordering. A good way to characterize VPS offers is to post the output of "cat /proc/user_beancounters".
Hey all, I talked to my VPS provider (colorhost.de) about running a (non-exit) tor relay, and I would recommend some communication if you plan to run your relay for a longer amount of time. Smaller VPS providers might not have experience with TOR, and just assume "illegal" torrents when someone uses large amounts of bandwidth. In the price range we're talking about here, the provider has to have an internal assumption about how much of your "Unlimited Bandwidth" you are going to consume on average. If you exceed that on a regular basis (and with an un-throttled relay, you likely will), you end up on their list of customers they do not want to keep. Also, due to the slim profit margin, they may just terminate your account if they are ever forced to manually investigate it for some reason (e.g. exit-node DMCA complaints). What I did was explain that I was going to run a non-exit relay node and that it would cause steady load and traffic, and asked in a very direct manner about how much constant traffic they were comfortable with for the 3€/mo plan, regardless of what was advertised. I got a number, adjusted my settings accordingly and I've enjoyed great customer service ever since. This arrangement has provided a small (albeit guard-flagged) relay to the TOR network for nearly two years now and I've never had to switch providers or otherwise spend time on administrative overhead. Cheers -k
On Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:47:40 -0800 Micah Lee <micahflee@riseup.net> allegedly wrote:
FYI, I just discovered a VPS provider DigitalOcean, and they seem fine with people running non-exit nodes:
Yep - that "mick" was me. I contacted them through their forum foillowing a recommendation from Roman Mamedov on this list (see my post of 4 January).
The cheapest plan is $5/month (256mb ram, 1 core, 20gb drive) with unlimited bandwidth. They give you New York and Amsterdam IP addresses. I haven't tried running a relay on it so I don't know how much bandwidth you can practically use, but it looks promising.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I signed up for their cheapest plan (on 31/12/12) to test it. The VM has debian installed. I initially fired up tor with no restrictions whatever to see what happened. I quickly ran out CPU cycles. Tor log complained "Your computer is too slow to handle this many circuit creation requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted exit policy." At one point (after a couple of days) tor just stopped and did not restart. No setting for MaxAdvertisedBandwidth I tried seemed to make any difference so I started experimenting with various throttle limits on the relay. I also set NumCPU to 1 and MaxOnionsPending 250 after reading a post recommending that. I currently have BandwidthRate 2500 KB and BandwidthBurst 2800 KB set and have a stable node that is running at circa 34 Mbit/s with just over 1000 tor circuits. Top reports cpu usage at around 30% and my vnstat stats (see below) predict 8.62 TiB traffic for the month. Now that I have a baseline, I will start to slowly ramp up the bandwidth allowance again to see what happens. Frankly, compared to my previous experience with some UK providers (see my posts about thrustvps in particular) this level of traffic for this price is astounding. If it keeps up, I'll likely pay for extra servers. Mick ---- vnstat snapshot this morning ----- Database updated: Wed Jan 9 09:02:29 2013 eth0 since 12/31/12 rx: 1.15 TiB tx: 1.18 TiB total: 2.33 TiB monthly rx | tx | total | avg. rate ------------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- Dec '12 75.50 MiB | 2.35 MiB | 77.85 MiB | 0.24 kbit/s Jan '13 1.15 TiB | 1.18 TiB | 2.33 TiB | 27.63 Mbit/s ----------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- estimated 4.25 TiB | 4.36 TiB | 8.62 TiB | daily rx | tx | total | avg. rate ---------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- yesterday 213.13 GiB | 217.74 GiB | 430.87 GiB | 41.83 Mbit/s today 64.71 GiB | 66.44 GiB | 131.16 GiB | 33.80 Mbit/s --------------------+-------------+-------------+--------------- estimated 171.93 GiB | 176.52 GiB | 348.46 GiB | --------------------------------------------------------------------- blog: baldric.net gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi I want to share my experience with a hoster I discovered about a year ago: https://serverastra.com/ I set up a non-exit relay in feburary 2012. They offer a VPS with 100Mbit unmetered traffic for about 15$/month. Here are the vnstat stats: http://paste.scratchbook.ch/view/26af6ae0 Recently, I asked them if I am allowed to run an exit-relay. They answered: -- For now our ToS allows Tor nodes. but please be advised they are really easy to abuse. We will try to protect the network with our firewall in case of problems (we already experienced spam from ToR networks). In any case a ticket will be opened upon abuse case and we will try to keep both sides confidentiality during negotiation. Happy New Year! -- They are really cooperative! They also set me up a reverse DNS. So everything runs fine and fast. Although they sometimes encounter problems with DDOS-attacks, which affects the bandwith. But this only happened twice last year. Claude
My experience with ServerAstra is that they will null-route your IP address on reports of abuse. No notification to me, their customer. This put me in the position on several occasions of noticing that my VPS had been down for x days. It was only when opening a Support Ticket to complain about lack of service that I was told my IP address had been null-routed due to abuse reports. Here's an example of what I was told: "Your VPS has been blocked automatically on numerous accounts of virus, malware activity and spamming, and got itself into several block lists. Please clean up the vps and fix the issues which are allowing such things to happen, as we keep our network secure and free of these problems. Your VPS ip will be enabled again rightaway but please prevent further abuse of our network resources." This while running an exit node with the Reduced Exit Policy. This was my experience from Feb through May of last year. They may not have a policy against exit nodes but they sure make it difficult to keep one running. On 01/09/2013 06:12 AM, Claude wrote:
Hi
I want to share my experience with a hoster I discovered about a year ago: https://serverastra.com/
I set up a non-exit relay in feburary 2012. They offer a VPS with 100Mbit unmetered traffic for about 15$/month. Here are the vnstat stats: http://paste.scratchbook.ch/view/26af6ae0
Recently, I asked them if I am allowed to run an exit-relay. They answered:
-- For now our ToS allows Tor nodes. but please be advised they are really easy to abuse. We will try to protect the network with our firewall in case of problems (we already experienced spam from ToR networks). In any case a ticket will be opened upon abuse case and we will try to keep both sides confidentiality during negotiation. Happy New Year! --
They are really cooperative! They also set me up a reverse DNS. So everything runs fine and fast. Although they sometimes encounter problems with DDOS-attacks, which affects the bandwith. But this only happened twice last year.
Claude
_______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
sorry claude for kidnapping your thread, thanks for the information BTW :) and sorry everyone else for reviving an older thread. i just want to ask, from others experience, if what im getting from my service provider is a reasonable deal. for 10 euros a month they allow me about 115GB daily traffic in each direction. and its not throttled after that, its just what they asked me to put in my torrc. and with the bandwidth they give me its exhausted in about 12 hours each day. what do you guys think? thanks On 9 January 2013 06:12, Claude <longneck-accounts@scratchbook.ch> wrote:
Hi
I want to share my experience with a hoster I discovered about a year ago: https://serverastra.com/
I set up a non-exit relay in feburary 2012. They offer a VPS with 100Mbit unmetered traffic for about 15$/month. Here are the vnstat stats: http://paste.scratchbook.ch/view/26af6ae0
Recently, I asked them if I am allowed to run an exit-relay. They answered:
-- For now our ToS allows Tor nodes. but please be advised they are really easy to abuse. We will try to protect the network with our firewall in case of problems (we already experienced spam from ToR networks). In any case a ticket will be opened upon abuse case and we will try to keep both sides confidentiality during negotiation. Happy New Year! --
They are really cooperative! They also set me up a reverse DNS. So everything runs fine and fast. Although they sometimes encounter problems with DDOS-attacks, which affects the bandwith. But this only happened twice last year.
Claude
_______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Well, 115GB/day == 3.4TB/month == 10Mbps unmetered/month. I assume you are talking about a VPS? It seems to me that the 10 Euros/month would be better spent on an unmetered 10Mbps plan. At least that way the relay would be up all the time (and eventually considered Stable) instead of up and down in 12-hour increments. On the other hand if your service provider has already indicated that they are OK with you running a Tor relay that might better worth more than taking a chance on some other provider. Just my opinion(s). http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104 On 01/12/2013 04:52 PM, george torwell wrote: [snip]
i just want to ask, from others experience, if what im getting from my service provider is a reasonable deal. for 10 euros a month they allow me about 115GB daily traffic in each direction. and its not throttled after that, its just what they asked me to put in my torrc. and with the bandwidth they give me its exhausted in about 12 hours each day. what do you guys think? thanks
On Sat, 12 Jan 2013 18:23:50 -0500 Steve Snyder <swsnyder@snydernet.net> wrote:
Well, 115GB/day == 3.4TB/month == 10Mbps unmetered/month.
They said "in each direction", so I assume it was 6.8TB...? A bit better, but even so, doesn't strike me as the most effective deal ever. My history with DigitalOcean ($5/month), in/out/total: Dec '12 4.99 TiB | 5.32 TiB | 10.31 TiB | 44.00 Mbit/s Nov '12 6.35 TiB | 6.84 TiB | 13.19 TiB | 43.70 Mbit/s Oct '12 2.10 TiB | 2.26 TiB | 4.36 TiB | 13.97 Mbit/s Or PrismaVPS ($5/month too) Dec '12 1.89 TiB | 1.96 TiB | 3.86 TiB | 12.37 Mbit/s Nov '12 1.85 TiB | 1.94 TiB | 3.79 TiB | 12.55 Mbit/s Oct '12 1.89 TiB | 1.97 TiB | 3.87 TiB | 12.40 Mbit/s 4TB for $5 is more bang for the buck than 6.8TB for $13 (if it's even actually 6.8TB). And you would have no limitation with regard to b/w per day, only per month, which is less of a maintenance burden. -- With respect, Roman ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Stallman had a printer, with code he could not see. So he began to tinker, and set the software free."
On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 05:37:44 +0600 Roman Mamedov <rm@romanrm.ru> allegedly wrote:
My history with DigitalOcean ($5/month), in/out/total:
Dec '12 4.99 TiB | 5.32 TiB | 10.31 TiB | 44.00 Mbit/s Nov '12 6.35 TiB | 6.84 TiB | 13.19 TiB | 43.70 Mbit/s Oct '12 2.10 TiB | 2.26 TiB | 4.36 TiB | 13.97 Mbit/s
A caveat on digitalocean. I signed up for a trial (and am happy) but I couldn't believe that my current traffic level was sustainable long term at that price point. So I specifically asked the question "what can I realistically use?" They replied: "We are currently offering free bandwidth and we certainly appreciate you reaching out to us because you are pushing a substantial amount and we do have backend processes running that constantly run consistency and health checks and bandwidth usage is something that we monitor. Mainly for detecting abuse or otherwise suspicious traffic. Your current traffic level of 32-40Mbps is fine. In the future we will eventually switch away from a free bandwidth model. Initially we roll out features to make everything simpler and to gauge our customers usage and to understand how to best cater the service to their needs." So - prices /will/ go up and/or bandwidth allowance /will/ go down. Best Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- blog: baldric.net gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
I couldn't believe that my current traffic level was sustainable long term at that price point. So I specifically asked the question "what can I realistically use?" They replied:
"We are currently offering free bandwidth and we certainly appreciate you reaching out to us because you are pushing a substantial amount and we do have backend processes running that constantly run consistency and health checks and bandwidth usage is something that we monitor. Mainly for detecting abuse or otherwise suspicious traffic.
Your current traffic level of 32-40Mbps is fine. In the future we will eventually switch away from a free bandwidth model. Initially we roll out features to make everything simpler and to gauge our customers usage and to understand how to best cater the service to their needs."
So - prices /will/ go up and/or bandwidth allowance /will/ go down.
I think I posted here about how to find places to host nodes for diversity. The same applies for bandwidth. If you survey the pipe market, you will find the true avg price of bandwidth. Don't ever expect to be able to connect to and use that bandwidth without: a) paying more for what is attached to and servicing it b) paying less without tradeoffs If you're signing up for unmetered miracle deals you should also ask specifically if your account will be grandfathered when it comes time for them to pay their bills or their VC money dries up.
On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 16:36:25 -0500 grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:
If you're signing up for unmetered miracle deals you should also ask specifically if your account will be grandfathered
Or stop worrying, just pay month-to-month, and enjoy it while it lasts. -- With respect, Roman ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Stallman had a printer, with code he could not see. So he began to tinker, and set the software free."
participants (12)
-
Andreas Fink -
Claude -
george torwell -
grarpamp -
krugar -
kupo＠damnfbi.tk -
Micah Lee -
mick -
Moritz Bartl -
Roman Mamedov -
Steve Snyder -
tor-admin