[tor-relays] RelayBandwidthRate vs AccountingMax

teor teor2345 at gmail.com
Mon May 11 08:31:20 UTC 2015


> Date: Sun, 10 May 2015 23:13:18 +0100
> From: Christopher Baines <mail at cbaines.net>
> 
> I run this relay [1], and currently use the following config:
> 1:
> https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/91F4DFA04743755C8551A12F8C4065F79786B732
> 
> RelayBandwidthRate 1.7 MB
> RelayBandwidthBurst 20 MB
> 
> This keeps it from using more than ~3TB of bandwidth in a month.
> However, I wonder if this is beneficial for the network, over using the
> AccountingMax instead?

If you use "AccountingMax 3TB" and "AccountingStart month 1 00:00" (or whenever your rollover date is), the relay will go at full speed, use all the quota you specify, then hibernate for the rest of the month.
The next month, it will calculate the maximum start date that it could start at to use all the bandwidth at a similar rate to last month, then wake at a random interval between the start of the month and the calculated date.
Note that the AccountingMax quota will make the relay hibernate when either the download or the upload individually hit the quota. If you want the sum of both, use "AccountingRule sum".

If you use RelayBandwidthRate, the relay will go at partial speed, and may not use all the quota if there are any quiet periods.

Personally, I'd rather have faster relays for part of the month, but others favour stable relays for the entire month.

It may also depend on whether your relay is one or more of:
* a guard, where stability would be a priority,
* a middle (that is, not guard or exit), where there is plenty of bandwidth, and therefore speed would be a priority, and/or
* an exit, where speed would again be a priority…
as far as I can work it out, anyway.

Both stable relays and fast relays are a valuable contribution,  please contribute what you think the Tor network needs most.

teor

teor2345 at gmail dot com
pgp 0xABFED1AC
https://gist.github.com/teor2345/d033b8ce0a99adbc89c5

teor at blah dot im
OTR D5BE4EC2 255D7585 F3874930 DB130265 7C9EBBC7

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