5 ms·

Actually probably not very much traffic is from tor. Tor bandwidth is notoriously bad.

fosco 8y ago
are there any researched measurements to show exactly how much is available? obviously it would vary greatly depending on where the connection is going... but wondering if there is some overarching idea of what it has..
- niij 8y ago
  https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth.html https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth.html Currently the network is processing ~125Gbit/s of traffic.
  - fosco 8y ago
    is there a way to see the average bandwidth a tor end user would get? seems like a good amount?
    - niij 8y ago
      I assume you mean exit traffic. Exit traffic is anything connecting to the open internet, whereas hidden services never leaves the Tor network. For exit traffic I don't believe there is a metric for average user speed. But, I just ran a 3 speed tests using different circuits and was getting 500-800KB/s download speeds on average.
- dmitrygr 8y ago
  Try using it. Very slow. No matter where you are. I understand that some people have no choice other than to use it. so I stopped using it to leave whatever bandwidth there is in the exit nodes to them
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    I use it to control my 3d printers at our local hackerspace. I have octoprint set up with a IP behind a NAT, and a hidden service. When I'm not at the 'space, I use Orbot on my android and OctoRemote. I get reasonably good speeds and latency. I can also view my webcam on the printer. It's not 4HD by any means, but is definitely usable.
    - detaro 8y ago
      It wouldn't be surprising if hidden services had a lot better performance. Running a guard node is a lot less risky than an exit, so there's probably a lot more capacity available for traffic staying inside the network.
      - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
        That makes a lot more sense, regarding in-Tor bandwidth. I've also had quite a few projects in which I'm trying to normalize Tor usage. My biggest one thus to date is a Tor-ified IoT network that uses your own resources instead of nebulous "cloud" providers. https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite-homeofficehackerspace-automation https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite-homeofficehacker... Long story short, there's a lot of promise to a .onion address, given it acts like a telephone number. Change IPs? Who cares. You retain your "number" no matter where you move :) It's also a lot less scary when talking to people about this, and how Tor is awesome in many areas.
        detaro 8y ago
        Yes, Tor hidden services are neat technology, using them for IoT is a clever idea. Authenticated, not really scannable and you avoid the typical issue of going out to someone pre-determined to get connectivity from the outside.
        Hello71 8y ago
        This only works for HSv3 though. HSv2 addresses are enumerable without too too much work.
- Franciscouzo 8y ago
  You can see that for a 5MiB file average download time is around 12 seconds [0], which is around 425KiB/s, the main problem with Tor is latency, downloading a 50KiB file takes around 1 to 2 seconds. [0] https://metrics.torproject.org/torperf.html?start=2018-05-15&end=2018-08-13&source=all&server=public&filesize=5mb https://metrics.torproject.org/torperf.html?start=2018-05-15...
derefr 8y ago
Tor bandwidth and TTFB used to be universally very bad for me, no matter what I was doing. Some time around ~2 years ago, though, the particular use-case of using Tor to (anonymously) access public-Internet websites got a lot better—both in bandwidth and TTFB. Access to Tor hidden services is still slow, though. Which makes me wonder: is the Tor network itself unilaterally faster now, and it's actually just the particular Tor hidden services which are all coincidentally bandwidth-starved? Comparing apples to apples, DuckDuckGo's hidden-service gateway (https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/) still seems a lot worse-off than their clear-net website (https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/). And I would bet that they would scale their Tor gateway if they could. So maybe this is a limitation in how Tor handles routing to hidden services? Does a .onion have to route to one physical Tor node, rather than being capable of load-balancing among many?

are there any researched measurements to show exactly how much is available? obviously it would vary greatly depending on where the connection is going... but wondering if there is some overarching idea of what it has..

niij 8y ago
https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth.html https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth.html Currently the network is processing ~125Gbit/s of traffic.
- fosco 8y ago
  is there a way to see the average bandwidth a tor end user would get? seems like a good amount?
  - niij 8y ago
    I assume you mean exit traffic. Exit traffic is anything connecting to the open internet, whereas hidden services never leaves the Tor network. For exit traffic I don't believe there is a metric for average user speed. But, I just ran a 3 speed tests using different circuits and was getting 500-800KB/s download speeds on average.
dmitrygr 8y ago
Try using it. Very slow. No matter where you are. I understand that some people have no choice other than to use it. so I stopped using it to leave whatever bandwidth there is in the exit nodes to them
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  I use it to control my 3d printers at our local hackerspace. I have octoprint set up with a IP behind a NAT, and a hidden service. When I'm not at the 'space, I use Orbot on my android and OctoRemote. I get reasonably good speeds and latency. I can also view my webcam on the printer. It's not 4HD by any means, but is definitely usable.
  - detaro 8y ago
    It wouldn't be surprising if hidden services had a lot better performance. Running a guard node is a lot less risky than an exit, so there's probably a lot more capacity available for traffic staying inside the network.
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      That makes a lot more sense, regarding in-Tor bandwidth. I've also had quite a few projects in which I'm trying to normalize Tor usage. My biggest one thus to date is a Tor-ified IoT network that uses your own resources instead of nebulous "cloud" providers. https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite-homeofficehackerspace-automation https://hackaday.io/project/12985-multisite-homeofficehacker... Long story short, there's a lot of promise to a .onion address, given it acts like a telephone number. Change IPs? Who cares. You retain your "number" no matter where you move :) It's also a lot less scary when talking to people about this, and how Tor is awesome in many areas.
      - detaro 8y ago
        Yes, Tor hidden services are neat technology, using them for IoT is a clever idea. Authenticated, not really scannable and you avoid the typical issue of going out to someone pre-determined to get connectivity from the outside.
        Hello71 8y ago
        This only works for HSv3 though. HSv2 addresses are enumerable without too too much work.
Franciscouzo 8y ago
You can see that for a 5MiB file average download time is around 12 seconds [0], which is around 425KiB/s, the main problem with Tor is latency, downloading a 50KiB file takes around 1 to 2 seconds. [0] https://metrics.torproject.org/torperf.html?start=2018-05-15&end=2018-08-13&source=all&server=public&filesize=5mb https://metrics.torproject.org/torperf.html?start=2018-05-15...

derefr 8y ago

Tor bandwidth and TTFB used to be universally very bad for me, no matter what I was doing. Some time around ~2 years ago, though, the particular use-case of using Tor to (anonymously) access public-Internet websites got a lot better—both in bandwidth and TTFB. Access to Tor hidden services is still slow, though. Which makes me wonder: is the Tor network itself unilaterally faster now, and it's actually just the particular Tor hidden services which are all coincidentally bandwidth-starved? Comparing apples to apples, DuckDuckGo's hidden-service gateway (https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ https://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/) still seems a lot worse-off than their clear-net website (https://duckduckgo.com/ https://duckduckgo.com/). And I would bet that they would scale their Tor gateway if they could. So maybe this is a limitation in how Tor handles routing to hidden services? Does a .onion have to route to one physical Tor node, rather than being capable of load-balancing among many?