[tor-relays-universities] Looking to chat with University Tor operators

[Andy Sayler]

Hi All,

I'm currently working on formulating a best-practices and how-to
document for running Tor nodes in University and other academic
settings. My primary focus is on running production Tor nodes, but I'm
also happy to hear about research uses of Tor. I'd love to chat with
anyone involved with the day-to-day operation of Tor nodes on
University networks as well as anyone involved with the process of
standing up Tor nodes on University networks and any administrative
overhead that involved.

I'm happy to chat via phone or email. If you're currently operating a
University-based Tor node and are interested in sharing some of your
experiences, let me know. Some potential questions I'd be curious to
hear about include:

+ Why do you operate a Tor node? For research? As a public service?
For student experience?
+ What's the governance/organizational structure for your nodes? Who's
in charge of their operation?
+ Who handles the day-to-day operation of the nodes? Run by campus IT?
Run by a dept? Run by students? Etc?
+ Who handles complaints?
+ Was it difficult to convince university administration/legal/IT to
support the deployment of Tor nodes? What were their concerns?
+ How many and what kind of complaints do you receive?
+ What kinds of costs are associated with the operation of your node
and how are these justified/budgeted?
+ What exit policy do you use?
+ How are the nodes placed within the campus network? Outside the
firewall/IDS? On their own public subnet? How do you handle isolation
of reputational issues?

Similarly, if anyone knows of existing published write-ups related to
operating or standing-up Tor nodes in university settings that you
could point me to, I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm already familiar
with:

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorGuideUniversities
https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/tor-on-campus.html

Thanks!

Sincerely,
Andy Sayler

Center for Democracy and Technology
Technologist Intern

University of Colorado, Boulder
Department of Computer Science
PhD Candidate
www.andysayler.com