Re: What to do at IP number change?

[Hans Schnehl <torvallenator@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On Mon, Jan 07, 2008 at 09:19:11PM +0100, dr._no@xxxxxxx wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> >      On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 20:55:36 +0100 Tom Hek <tomtorexitnode@xxxxxxxxx>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > >> i'm changing my public IP number ten times per day and to avoid  
> > >> confusion,
> > 
> >      *Ten times per day?*  Please tell us again why it is you're bothering
> > to run a tor server if you also feel you have to hide its existence.
> 
> it's because a moving target is harder to hit; it's more safe to change the IP number
> often.  
> Another point is that states like germany do like IP numbers so much that they do
> data retention and therefore i give them what they want - many IP numbers ;-)

The advantage of making it harder for  attackers  to find back your node (I wonder if
a serious attacker of a certain quality would really be stopped significantly) are 
IMHO negligible compare to the  advantage to more or less constantly relaying traffic.

Considering the time it needs for other servers and possible clients to realize your 
ever changing IP it may be a bad choice, as all of them will have to download the node's
new IP and during this time ther will be less traffic relayed as if the  node was wellknown.

I also live on a dial-up adsl2 line, and I can see how long it takes for traffic utilizing
the provided bandwidth after a reconnect. It is indeed a loss of bandwidth to the network. 

A word about obfuscation: If we run a tor node, we are as anonymous as Sta. Claus
hiding behind sunglasses to our ISP's. If they want, they can see that we are running a router/tor-node. 
Actually they can hardly miss it. Of course it may be fun to do somthing like tor-war-driving, but
as mentioned, not necessarily good for the network ;)
>  
> > >> i'm stopping my TOR server before and starting after the number  
> > >> change.
> > >> But after the start TOR is very slow.
> > >> Is there a better way to tell the TOR server that the public IP has  
> > >> changed?
> > >
> > >Tor will detect it and republish his server descriptor with the new IP  
> > >in it.
> > >
> >      That is true iff the Address line in torrc contains a host+domain name,
> > not an IP address, and the name server data base in question has been updated
> > to reflect the changed address.
> 
> So i should use a DynDNS host+domain name?

You may, but not necessarily have to. I made myself a little script catching the changed IP via mpd_linkup
(or ppp.linkup or what you may use) and changing the Address 123.123.123.123 into the new Address 234.234.234.234
and then sends a SIGHUP to Tor. 
 
> Regrets


Regards

Hans