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Re: [tor-relays] Bad idea to switch from a relay to a bridge?

On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 4:01 PM, Nick <tor-relays@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi,

I've been running a very low bandwidth relay for a little while with
my home ADSL connection, but given the up speed is so poor, and
(more importantly) my ADSL provider has stopped switching my IP
about every 24 hours, I'd like to switch to be a bridge.

However, I'm wondering whether the fact that my IP is already known
as a relay means that it wouldn't be useful? That is, if the people
bridges try to foil are likely to just blacklist any relays they see
by default (it wasn't an exit or guard).

I think that's a very good question, I've been considering it myself as well (as it also was at one point relevant to me, when I was running a relay.) Would be interested to hear opinions.

I would think it's generally OK; I would try and change the nickname of your Tor server (by 'server' I mean a generic node that can be either a relay or a bridge.) There are some relays that can be found (when searching via Onionoo, e.g. using Globe [1]) to be or have been both bridges and relays. It is questionable whether there are any ISPs / filters / etc. who might try to use this kind of archive browsing/discovery as one of the channels for collecting bridge IP addresses, but it's possible in theory at least. See related ticket. [2]

Thing is, when a bridge has once been a relay (under e.g. the same IP address), it's possible to see if that address was ever Tor relay at one point (if it was, some ISPs might use this as enough of a reason/criterion for censoring out connections.) With current ExoneraTor and relay-search it's not easy as you have to enter a date / date range etc., but the information is there in the archives. For example, if you query my new(ish) python-onionoo tool [3] which can search in most of the archival data available, it's very easy to see if an IPv4 address was ever part of the Tor network. [4] I think some discussion on this might be fruitful.

[1]:Âhttp://globe.rndm.de/
[2]:Âhttps://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5684
[3]:Âhttps://github.com/wfn/torsearchÂ(though I need to write up a decent readme..)
[4]: e.g.Âhttp://ts.mkj.lt:5555/details?search=79.98.25.182
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