Tor network speed

[Giorgos Pallas]

I am on a university's network with a connection of 1 Gbit. My 
experience as far as speed is concerned is quite awkward: I just 
downloaded for example Adobe Acrobat Reader with an average speed of 90 
KB/sec, and sometimes I have downloaded large files with over 150 
KB/sec. Web experiences a bit of latency, but it is bearable...


Andrew Henry wrote:

>  >The basic requirement for running a server is to "have at least 20
>  >kilobytes/s each way" and minimal packet loss, so everything above that
>  >could be considered good. Tor isnt really meant for bittorrent or large
>  >file transfers.
>  >Web browsing is slowed down by Tor itself and then various applications
>  >like Privoxy (filtering the website etc).
>  >/Thomas
> 
> Well, maths has never really been my strong point, but isn't 20 Kbytes/s
> equal to 160 Kbits/s?  There is a huge difference between bytes and
> bits, and it is confusing to see the Tor server req. as 20 KBytes/s.
> when all ISPs advertise the KBit or MBit speeds.  My employers network
> has access to the internet at 10 MBytes/s LAN speed and when downloading
> files, I usually see a speed of anywhere between 100 KBits/s and 300
> KBits/s depending on the remote server speed.  When using Tor, I get 35
> Kbits/s to the same servers that moments ago were running at 100 KBits/s
> without Tor.
> 
> This is not a Privoxy issue as I tested Privoxy without Tor and there
> was an almost imperceptible slowdown--nothing in comparison to the Tor
> slowdown.
> 
> If the minimum Tor server requirement is 160 KBits/s for all volunteer
> servers then 35 KBits/s is still quite slow.  Even if there are many
> hops between the entry and exit points, I would not have expected there
> to be such a big difference between that and normal router paths that
> may require several hops to a destination IP under normal circumstances
> without Tor.  Plus, I am assuming that Tor is not yet saturated by
> mainstream users.
> 
> The reason for posting this question was to try to figure out if I can
> do some re-configuration to speed things up like specifying the entry
> point or something, for a server nearer to my location.  The second
> reason was to get some solid facts about the speed capability of the
> network, and to try to deduce if there is something that could be 
> optimised.
> 
> I do realise the purpose of Tor is to protect privacy during web
> browsing, or chat sessions, or whilst using other network clients that
> can leak private information.  I realise that transferring files via FTP
> or otherwise does not really fit the bill for Tor usage as very little
> private info is leaked other than the IP, but it is not likely that an
> FTP/Bittorrent (what made you assume I was using bittorrent?) site will
> harvest this data for marketing purposes, so using FTP with Tor doesn't
> seem to deliver much benefit in my eyes, unless the user is more
> paranoid than usual and does not want any IP info leaked whatsoever, but
> I gave this file transfer example to demonstrate the speed issue, as I
> do not have tools to monitor the speed of web browsing.
> 
> -- 
> Andrew
> 
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