[tor-talk] Orbot Data Overhead

[Roger Dingledine]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 05:13:16PM -0400, Patrick B wrote:
> I made a blog post <https://guardianproject.info/2012/06/20/orbot-data-tax/> on
> the Guardian site about the data cost incurred by Orbot usage. It generally
> seems quite manageable for most use cases. Running in the backround 24/7
> for 30 days does incur ~200MB of idle usage which would be significant for
> mobile users with smaller data plans. Check out the post for more details.
> I'm also curious if anyone has taken similar measurements with Tor to
> compare the results.

Hi Patrick,

You should compare Tor 0.2.2.x with Tor 0.2.3.x in terms of idle bandwidth
load. Tor 0.2.3.x uses microdescriptors rather than descriptors for
directory information, so it should reduce the daily amount of stuff
your Tor has to fetch to keep informed about what relays are available.

https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/158-microdescriptors.txt

Also, if your Tor stays idle for long periods of time (like, days),
you might find https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2149
interesting (not yet implemented).

--Roger