Re: [tor-talk] Tor Relay Smartphone App

[Casey Rodarmor <casey@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 10:47 AM, Griffin Boyce <griffin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> It seems really obvious not to run a relay off of an extremely low-power
> computer.


I'd just like to add that I don't think it is really obvious that running a
relay from an extremely low-power computer is a bad idea. There are many
networks in which anemic computers can be successful participants, even
with highish bandwidth requirements. There are probably tons of people out
there who are sympathetic to the high level goals of tor, but don't have
enough background on how it works to know exactly what kind of hardware it
needs. (Including myself, at the beginning of this thread!)

I would hope that a multi-pronged approach would be adopted, to:

1. Educate users about what hardware and software they need to productively
contribute.

2. Improve the network to allow users to productively contribute with
whatever resources they can. (For example, even allowing users who cannot
proxy traffic of any kind to at least participate in peer discovery, or
contribute somehow to geographic diversity or fault tolerance.)

3. Improve software to inform users that they don't have the hardware and
software necessarily to contribute. A well meaning user should just get a
friendly message saying that they should buy better hardware or upgrade
their connection, and the client should refuse to run.

I think such a multi-pronged, user-friendly, and fault-tolerant approach
would probably best serve the long-term goals of the project.


> IRL, I always try to convince people not to do it, but it rarely works.
> Honestly I would recommend against it even for a bridge, but there's
> something to be said for having increased address diversity at the expense
> of performance.  (But I *also* don't want bridge users to be penalized for
> needing to use a bridge).
>
>   Raspberry Pis are decent for most running hidden services, however they
> suck royally for relays.
>
>   But to answer your actual question: because we each only have a finite
> amount of time and can't respond to every thread.  As for what to run a
> relay on, there are very small servers that run about $100 that get the job
> done.
>
>   I follow the "1 rule" -- At a bare minimum, 1GB RAM & 1Ghz CPU,
> connected via ethernet, with "RelayBandwidthRate 1000 KB" set in torrc.
> This is for a dedicated machine that only runs a relay. Not a raspi, not
> your phone, not a cafe wifi in Kamchatka. Test your internet speed before
> setting up your relay and you may be pleasantly surprised at how much
> throughput you can get. =) Helping the network is really important, but you
> want to make sure that you're not actually hurting the network on accident.
>
> best,
> Griffin
>
> --
> "I believe that usability is a security concern; systems that do
> not pay close attention to the human interaction factors involved
> risk failing to provide security by failing to attract users."
> ~Len Sassaman
>
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