[tor-talk] Tor Relay Smartphone App

I beatthebastards at inbox.com
Sun Oct 12 23:53:52 UTC 2014


Isis,

Why, then, has there been discussion of the use of Raspberry Pis without mention of this?
What is the minimum and best low power single board computer that would not be detrimental to TOR?
If clear statements were made on Torproject.org rather than the ping pong on the list I feel it would give people a better chance to get started in TOR without first lurking and unscrambling jargon and cryptic comments.

Rob

> -----Original Message-----
> From: isis at torproject.org
> Sent: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 21:32:22 +0000
> To: tor-talk at lists.torproject.org
> Subject: Re: [tor-talk] Tor Relay Smartphone App
> 
> Casey Rodarmor transcribed 2.0K bytes:
>> What is the minimum bandwidth/latency that a node requires in order for
>> it
>> to benefit the network? I read here* that 100 kilobytes/s each way would
>> be
>> enough, which I imagine many phones are capable of handling, and
>> represent
>> a small fraction of a wifi network's bandwidth.
>> 
>> *https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en
>> 
> 
> Hello Casey,
> 
> We're currently discussing that the above page should be updated to about
> 250KB/s. [0]
> 
> The problem is this: All clients fetch information about all the relays
> in the
> network from the Directory Authorities/Mirrors, and these fetches take up
> a
> certain amount of bandwidth. If the relay is too slow, the bandwidth
> provided
> by that relay does not compensate for the directory fetching bandwidth
> used to
> tell people about the relay, and thus it is actively harming the network.
> 
> Additionally, since Tor processes are normally CPU-bound, most relays
> aren't
> able to use all their available bandwidth with a single Tor process.
> Running a
> relay on ARM (or likely any other mobile/low power) CPU will only further
> limit how much traffic your relay is actually pushing.
> 
> Additionally, if you're attempting to do this with Orbot on an Android
> device,
> you'll run into issues with Android's process management system and the
> Tor
> process randomly dying unexpectedly. This means that you are providing an
> unreliable, flapping relay which is actively messing up other people's
> connections through the Tor network.
> 
> For the full thread where Mike Perry, myself, and other Tor developers
> are
> discussing the details of how badly slow relays mess up the network, see
> [0].
> 
> 
> [0]:
> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-September/007558.html
> 
> --
>  ♥Ⓐ isis agora lovecruft
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