Re: benchmarking a node

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 01:36:11PM +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> I would like to benchmark my node, to see whether the hoster
> who sold me a 10 MBit/s flat rodent is defaulting on contract.
> 
> How do I benchmark a node?

To get an idea of what your node is doing right now, you could look at
http://serifos.eecs.harvard.edu:8000/cgi-bin/exit.pl?sortbw=1&addr=1
which shows redgene with a max self-measured burst of 847kB/s, and an
average of 337 kB/s in and 339 kB/s out.

You can get the data itself from your descriptor:
http://serifos.eecs.harvard.edu:8000/cgi-bin/desc.pl?q=redgene and look
at the write-history and read-history (which are in 15 minute summaries,
oldest to most recent).

To push up these numbers, you need to start sending traffic through it.
One way is to listen on ports like 80 and 443 to attract more users
behind firewalls, and to open up your exit policy more to attract more
users in general. Another way is to run a Tor client on a link that's
faster than your server's, and start transferring a lot of data through
it, e.g. by specifying it as your entrynode. Do several in parallel if
you need to. If you want to get more precise, use a Tor controller like
Blossom to craft a path that uses only your node; and/or run your own
whole Tor network on the server (see FAQ entry).

> Another question: as Tor alpha seems to crash regularly,

If anybody can give us a useful backtrace from the crashes in Tor cvs,
that would be wonderful. There's a crash bug that happens for fast
servers and so far we have been unable to track it down.

--Roger