[tor-relays] New Here

[Duncan]

Hi Paul,

Paul Templeton:
> Hi all,
> 
> Have been running a mirror for a couple of years and haven't had much
> time to dedicate to and exit node but have finally committed to it.
> Found a provider that doesn't seem to have a cap on data and it will
> cost me about five euros a month.
> 
> Question I have is two fold. First I find that atlas.torproject.org
> sometime says the node is down but its running and connected. Secondly
> how dose the bandwidth throttling work. I have set it to 300kbits with
> 500kbit burst but I can see the in/out traffic staying over 1mb for
> large periods of time and bursting to 7/8mb. Its not a problem just
> curios.

For bandwidth throttling, the option "BandwidthRate" applies to both 
incoming and outgoing traffic. That is, setting BandwidthRate to 300 
Kbytes will limit incoming traffic to 300 kilobytes/s and outgoing 
traffic to 300 kilobytes/s. It's possible that whatever is measuring the 
in/out traffic is combining both these values (hence the 1megabit for 
the 500kbit value). The option "BandwidthBurst" behaves in a similar 
manner.

The manual explains each option in the torrc reasonably fully: 
https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-manual.html.en
(Alternatively, the command 'man tor' should display a virtual manual on 
the computer.)

I'm not sure why you'd be seeing the latter burst but I suspect the 
reason is due to an ill-configured torrc. It's probably worth checking 
the options again after reading the manual and reloading the Tor 
service.

Best,
Duncan