Smallest cheapest device to run a tor home server?

F. Fox kitsune.or at gmail.com
Sat Apr 12 01:29:31 UTC 2008


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Jonathan Addington wrote:
(much snippage)
> Personally I am running Tor on an old server, 2x500Mhz PII's with a
> cable modem (e.g., keeping ~1350 connections open at once). While I have
> quite a bit of RAM and hard drive space Tor doesn't take up much of
> either, and the computing power is more than enough. If you want me to
> run some benchmark's I'd be more than happy to.
(snip)

"Kitsune" started on an old PII 300Mhz with 256MB of RAM; I've since
migrated it to some AMD Duron 800Mhz/512MB RAM hardware a friend gave me.

The Debian Etch install on the hard drive was transferred in its
entirety via a dd command, although I did swap the generic x86 kernel
for a K7-optimized one.

"Kitsune" had been a guard node before, while on the PII; on the Duron,
it's been running for about a month, and has been marked as
Fast/Guard/Stable for most of that time.

It's important to note that - as some have noted here - the stability of
the perimeter router/firewall is VERY important. I used to have a WRT54G
running HyperWRT/Thibor at the "front lines;" it crashed A LOT (it
couldn't handle the large state tables that were being generated).

After migrating "kitsune," I killed the 54G's routing function, and
converted it to a switch/AP only. The old PII that used to run
"kitsune," got a pfSense install.

It's VERY stable, and the traffic shaper is really nice; I haven't had
to use any traffic limitations on "kitsune" itself.

*****

So, bottom line, the processing requirements aren't bad, but you need to
be careful with what you do for a perimeter router/firewall. =:oD

- --
F. Fox
AAS, CompTIA A+/Network+/Security+
Owner of Tor node "kitsune"
http://fenrisfox.livejournal.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iQIVAwUBSAAQe+j8TXmm2ggwAQih4Q/9F45ezsAvhZWTxp7UilRE4EZ+Ty1ZO2OF
/N4Bpg5jKxFWJbSTNw6Q1pbwPD6AXx9CwTI3RsZopwTQwKlzp5rLhGm+vFoDDyB9
DxzLo95sYpBOV7b/m6l6m4EbtV5tDfuL/ClB/tBpMWybOrv8VByoNooSOeq4vXVx
m56bmlofooqYu0DhLDhI/TeDQtpH3bTuqtuhk7Ta+gRRbN3icw20qn7p0oouh2zp
BWTWBPc0o/6S1Tp46HyONoPgqBJQGJM0BKNDVPSHTYqc0pd7LF55zMOv5liXwr0Z
ekRRo+M8wUE1HKerXbVmnntRcyl/pSBcSruYgBVDy53HHe2rU80Jr9tTjxLmCeI+
qDzOI/cp8kNduSUVl85B5dRKghc2U1mYDLykbcetsMBiB3QOQ5aTfaEZlDusl9WE
DhjWRJ30huMyDyvId6xrOGFi59amPFr2OnayfsO0IDxmrAhBh36G9TWZcpBhVadi
EPVXKJwAEzkTqpsZvOqoyRLWlzDT9zMQvNVWxdulUjcivf0E6AGaMs2mSr4Pq+5W
CE4V91JqDyT3KbVSbhu0icwXE4EFG+4ruMAOGQ6Zjq4TMqwBXdf7aKlu14Y83P3o
Ki6dO/JNOAFhTkkPwLCKv4Rh/X+G/zNY0KY5iCFNRRP5Th/QIPsp6YiRj7co7yw1
C2Q7cDaoQbQ=
=Hd+1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----



More information about the tor-talk mailing list