[tor-relays] Node specialization

[Andy Isaacson]

On Sat, Aug 31, 2013 at 11:32:55AM -0500, Pascal wrote:
> http://torstatus.blutmagie.de indicates that only 21.4% of Tor nodes
> are exit nodes.  Are we wasting this precious resource by running
> non-exit traffic through these nodes?

More important than "what percent of nodes are exits" is: what
percentage of throughput is provided by exit nodes?

Based on my (probably wrong) hacking at the stats, exit nodes handle a
bit over a third of the actual traffic in the Tor network, 36% in the
last snapshot I have at hand.

Small nodes tend not to be exits, and exits tend to be quite large (100
Mbps or greater), so limiting exit nodes to only handling exit traffic
would actually decrease the overall throughput of the network.

-andy