Time Warner bad / VPS recommendations

[John Brooks]

Two very important factors to keep in mind for a tor node on a VPS are
memory and FD limits. A lot of VPS software will limit the number of sockets
available to each guest, which is usually a limit tor will run into quickly.
I run my 300 KB/s node with a limit of 8192 sockets, and it usually has
5000-6000 open. Aside from that, a tor node handling a significant amount of
traffic will start using ridiculous amounts of memory after running for a
couple days; I regularly see mine at 200-300mb. VPS systems are notoriously
low on those two resources, so you should keep that in mind while searching.

As for hosts that will allow Tor, the best recommendation I have is to be
up-front about it. Explain it and ask explicitly if you will have problems;
there is a good chance they'll give a vague answer to get the sale and go
back on it later, but still worth a try.

And just because somebody should say it, thanks for being so dedicated to
running a node. Tor depends on people like you ;)

 - John Brooks

On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 7:42 PM, Matthew McCabe <mateo07 at mrmccabe.com> wrote:

> So Time Warner Cable finally gave me an ultimatum that either I stop
> running Tor or they will shut off my service.  This was after 3 DMCA and 2
> general abuse/hacking complaints.  Note that Time Warner does not say
> anything about proxy servers in their AUP.  They were just tired of getting
> these complaints on my account.  Also, AT&T was not able to setup DSL
> service at my location...so I have decided to kill my Tor exit node.
>
> I would really like to continue running a Tor exit node.  I have looked at
> a couple virtual hosting companies such as vpslink and slicehost.  Some of
> their cheaper plans seem like they would be sufficient for running a Tor
> exit node.  Does anyone run Tor on a VPS?  If so, which company and plan do
> you use?  Have you gotten any flack for running a Tor exit node?
>
> Thanks,
> Matt
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/attachments/20090202/effb17ae/attachment.htm>