[tor-relays] Tor Cloud: still not listed

[Runa A. Sandvik]

On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 1:30 PM, Patrick ZAJDA <patrick at zajda.fr> wrote:
> Hi all,

Hi,

> I have set up an Amazon EC2 instance to run a Tor Relay, I chose
> Obfsproxy Bridges.
>
> First, I am blind and I am not to read the "How to" in the Get started
> page of cloud.torproject.org, so I though all was configured, and had
> a surprise with the security group I have to define by myself. :)
> So my question is: would it be possible to make the step by step
> instructions accessible please ? Less pictures or more text in all
> cases, having text doesn't require to remove images.

Thanks, I have added this to our Trac ticket about updating the
website: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8768)

> The second point is: I looked at the configuration, and noticed bridge
> is set to 1.
> I though it made the tor relay private, do I have miss-understood
> something?

>From https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges: Bridge relays (or
"bridges" for short) are Tor relays that aren't listed in the main Tor
directory (as opposed to relays). Since there is no complete public
list of them, even if an ISP is filtering connections to all the known
Tor relays, they probably won't be able to block all the bridges.

The difference between a Tor Cloud "obfsproxy bridge" and a "private
bridge" is whether or not the bridge reports its address (IP address
and port) to the Tor Project. If it does, the address will
automatically be distributed to users who need it (through the help
desk, bridges.torproject.org, etc). If it does not, it's up to you to
distribute the address.

> If I didn't miss-understand, that explains why it is still not listed
> on atlas.torproject.org, and there is a problem with the provided EC2
> image.
> Else, how long in my relay will be listed?

Only relays are listed on atlas.torproject.org. While it is possible
to run a relay on AWS, it's not recommended for the simple reason that
a useful relay will use too much bandwidth and cost a lot of money
(i.e. there are cheaper hosting alternatives if you wish to run a
relay).

-- 
Runa A. Sandvik