B.e.g.i.n.n.e.r Tor Q.u.e.s.t.i.o.n.s

[kazaam]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:00:03 -0800
"John Doe" <hfrsaxp3wq94qec at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've read the FAQs, Wikis, related information on official and
> external sites, discussions on the web and groups. My beginner
> questions are as follows. Please humor me, I'm new. I'm running Tor as
> a client only, with Privoxy for web browsing.
> 
> 1. When behind a router, do I need to forward specific ports even if I
> show up on ip checker web sites with exit node IP's and tor checker
> websites state tor is working? I'm running a client only. If port
> forwarding is required, would the developers of Tor consider adding a
> cmd line option for Tor to perform this automatically with each run,
> as many Bittorrent clients do?

No. If you have a NAT-router outgoing connections are allowed by default just incomming may be blocked in certain circumstances. But that's not interesting for you. If you are not behind a fascist firewall you don't have to change anything. Tor will run fine for you as a client.
UPNP (that's what torrent-clients do) is failure by conception and shouldn't be used by anyone.



> 
> 3. How can I verify Tor is handling DNS SOCKS connections correctly?
> It said it was working with the TestSocks option activated, but what
> of the 'Socks' error in #2 above?

Just check you're DNS-requests with tshark -S -i YOUR_NETWORK_DEVICE -R dns and look if it works for you :)


 

> 7. Often when I am loading several web pages in tabs with Tor,
> everything will come to a stop, and websites appear to hang without
> loading until I stop and reload, or a Privoxy error page shows saying
> it could not be resolved. Should I only load one page at a time with
> Tor?
Yes with Privoxy I also have seen this problem sometimes. But never with Polipo so I think that's a Privoxy-Problem not a Tor one.

cheers