[tor-relays] managing bandwidth quotum

[Kees Goossens]

Dear all,

A question on how to manage a bandwidth quotum of my internet provider.
I run a non-exit relay on a hosted server with 1000 GB bandwidth per month.

In essence, should I 
A- only set the AccountingMax, and let the relay figure out the RelayBandwidthRate & RelayBandwidthBurst by itself
B- set the AccountingMax, and set RelayBandwidthBurst to whatever the provider will allow (much higher than the average rate)
C- set the AccountingMax, and set RelayBandwidthRate to the average rate (quotum/31 days), and optionally set RelayBandwidthBurst
D- only set the RelayBandwidthRate to the average rate, and hope that I don’t go too much over my quotum

This could perhaps be rephrased as:
- is it better to offer a high bandwidth for part of the month and then hibernate, or 
- should I offer a lower average bandwidth for the whole month?

Details:
I’ve set “AccountingMax 450 GB” with the appropriate accounting start (conservative, since I log in occasionally too).
450 GB / 31 days => 168 KB / sec average 
Setting “BandwidthRate 168 KB” seems to severely underutilise the relay.
Setting “BandwidthRate 1000 KB”, to force usage of the relay, uses the relay bandwidth at a much larger rate (2670 KB/s consensus weight), and will cause hibernation after ~25 days.  

Thanks.
Kees

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