[Fwd: Non-member submission from [Mick <mbm at aibohphobia.org>]]

[Andrew Lewman]

Forwarding because Mick isn't subscribed at this address.

-------- Original Message --------
On Wed, 7 Apr 2010 21:56:19 +1000
Lyndsay Roger <gombadi at gmail.com> allegedly wrote:

> Sorry for the long email but I was just wondering what other people
> have experienced and any tips they may have on things I should do to
> keep the nodes running for years without too much hassle.

I have been running an exit node (in the UK) for some 10 months now.
Over that period I have moved the node from one provider to another
(in so doing running two nodes in parellel) until I finally settled on
my current provider where the node has been stable for around 5
months. During that time I have not had one single complaint, or
takedown notice.

(I should say that I moved between providers simply because my first
attempt at running a node alongside some other services ended up
impacting my other buisness use of the VPS I started it on, not because
I had a problem. I wanted to provide the maximum bandwidth I could
afford, so I eventually ended up devoting an entirely new VPS to tor
alone.)

In the process of choosing a provider I made sure in advance that the
ISP knew that I intended to run a tor exit node, understood what that
meant, and was content for me to do so. I had only one (polite)
refusal in my investigative approaches and I now run my node on a VPS
which allows 750 Gig of traffic per month (the most I can afford to
devote simply to tor).

In the course of ensuring that my provider was happy, I explained
my exit policy and I have stuck to that policy (no torrents, no email
for spam etc). In order to explain to the curious (or potentially
annoyed) sysadmins who see traffic from my node, I have a single
static web page (based on the tor wiki template) sitting on my node.
I know from my weblogs that that page is accessed fairly regularly,
so I assume that it answers the questions raised.

HTH

Mick