[tor-relays] Home broadband - worth running a relay?

[Nick]

Thanks for the advice Thomas.

What's the exact meaning of RelayBandwidthRate in torrc? I ask 
because I found having more than about 20Kib/s upload limit for 
bittorrent made my connection largely unusable, but leaving it 
without a download limit was fine (damn asynchronicity). How should 
I decide what an appropriate value should be? Twice the maximum 
upload limit I can devote to it? Or if I left the value unset would 
tor likely do a good enough job of deciding on an appropriate 
bandwidth value?

Nick

Quoth Thomas Hand:
> Hi Nick,
> I was in a similar boat to you for a while. Also UK based with adsl and a
> dynamic IP. I found that running a non-exit relay node is fine so long you
> limit bandwidth usage in torrc. Wouldn't recommended exit relay unless you
> want to deal with your ISP.
> If you only run a relay then the censorship list doesn't matter since all
> connections between nodes are encrypted, any exit node would suffer
> restrictions. I have heard UK ISP s like to monitor protocol and port usage
> and sometimes block certain ports. You can always change the port usage in
> torrc if you find certain ports blocked. If you find running relay uses too
> much bandwidth then going back to running the bridge is very useful for
> helping censored users and uses much less bandwidth. A dynamic IP in my
> experience can cause the node to become unresponsive and it may need to be
> restarted every few days or every week. I have a script set up which emails
> me when my afsl node goes down for example.
> Hope this helps.
> 
> T
>  On Jul 11, 2013 9:42 PM, "Nick" <tor-relays at njw.me.uk> wrote:
> 
> > Hi there,
> >
> > I have a reasonable ADSL connection, and a little always-on server.
> > The bandwidth is in the region of 2Mib/s down, something less up
> > (maybe 256Kib/s). Is it useful for me to run a tor relay with this
> > bandwidth? I'd like to run one which isn't an exit, at least for
> > now.
> >
> > If not, am I correct in thinking that a bridge is an appropriate
> > help? That's what I'm doing currently, but if a relay would be more
> > useful I'd be very happy to do that.
> >
> > One other unrelated(ish) question: I'm in the UK, where the idea of
> > censorship isn't resisted as strongly as it ought to be, and as a
> > result my internet connection is subject to a smallish amount of
> > censorship: whatever is on the secret IWF blacklist plus the pirate
> > bay. Does this mean that running an exit node from a home connection
> > here at some point in the future would not be helpful? Or only if
> > all HTTP(S) was blocked (as the IWF blacklist is secret there's
> > presumably no way to tell the tor network what is inaccessible from
> > this node).
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> > Nick
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> >

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