Re: [tor-relays] 60 new neu.edu relays in 16 minutes

DocTor and OrNetRadar detected that someone added 60 tor relays [1] with
your email address in the contact info field on 2017-08-08 between 15:45
and 16:01 UTC.

[1] https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetRadar/2017/08/08/a7.html

Since tor relay contact information is not authenticated I was wondering
if these are in fact your relays? (I guess they are)

Yes indeed they are ours. We started them all at the same time to make it clear that they are all run but one group of researchers.

You obviously don't have to answer but if you want to I'm curious:

Are these just temporary relays and part of your research or are they
here to stay to increase the capacity of the tor network for more
than just a few weeks or months?

I assume you are not planing to run them for a longer period of time
(>6months), but if you do you: Please consider network diversity when
adding that amount of tor relay capacity.
All your relays are operated in AS "Online S.a.s" - which is already the
second biggest AS in terms of tor network capacity.

At this stage we are not planning to run it for more than 6 months or so (but this might change). We understand that your concern is primarily about capacity diversity not trust in "Online S.a.s" since anyway it's already the second largest provider for Tor relays. Our experiments are not related to the traffic (and since all our relays are part of the same family at most one of them would be used in any circuit). We are using Online S.a.s because it it is cheap (I guess it's the same reason why others use it). We will check in the next couple of days if there is an alternative low cost provider. We have also limited our bandwidth but can increase it if more people express interest and it can help (we didn’t want to look like we are trying to attract/intercept traffic).

+-----------------------------+-------------+
| AS Name                     | CW Fraction |
+-----------------------------+-------------+
| OVH SAS                     |       15.95 |
| Online S.a.s.               |       13.41 |
| Hetzner Online GmbH         |        7.74 |
| Digital Ocean, Inc.         |        6.65 |
| myLoc managed IT AG         |        2.63 |
+-----------------------------+-------------+

Also the country (FR) is not ideal from a diversity point of view.

:) 14 of our relays are in the Netherlands but will make sure to diversify if we have to restart them.

thanks for running relays,
nusenu

Note: There is nothing wrong with adding 60 tor relays, especially with
proper MyFamily configuration as you did.

Thank you for the positive note and feedback!