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I have been running a relay node from my home network for 5 months now. Aside from sometimes melting my cheap router with concurrent connections I did not notic

by zaik 6y ago

I have been running a relay node from my home network for 5 months now. Aside from sometimes melting my cheap router with concurrent connections I did not notice anything out of ordinary.

tialaramex 6y ago
Relay nodes are unobjectionable. Nothing interesting happens as far as your neighbours are concerned, traffic passes in and out of your node, but that's true for any number of application protocols of no interest. However the comment you're replying to talks about exit nodes, these are potentially obnoxious for your neighbours, as from them of course emerges traffic that somebody else didn't want to admit to sending. Now, perhaps it's a young gay guy in a country where homosexuality is illegal, reading an essay by someone who has been in a similar situation. Or a fourteen year old looking at pornography bypassing a "family filter" But more likely it's vandals trying to replace every mention of a pop star they don't like on Wikipedia with the words "Jerk Poop-head", a spammer sending piles of unsolicited commercial email, or a botnet operator trying to send C&C packets to direct a DDoS. For this you will of course get blocked by various services, and explaining it isn't actually you might prevent getting arrested in many jurisdictions, but won't mean everybody lets you use their services from this obviously tainted connection. So, doing that on your personal ISP connection is probably a bad idea.
- zaik 6y ago
  Wikipedia blocks all editing from Tor exit nodes. You even have to apply for IP block exemption when you want to edit from Tor while logged in.
- whatatita 6y ago
  I'd like to highlight the point you made about running a non-exit node from your home network: they're unobjectionable. Running any node strengthens the TOR network as it provides more anonymous paths for users to connect through. Since running a middle node from home doesn't cause any issues for you, doing so is a great way to contribute to the network. If you have a machine that's always on, has slightly higher specs, and you have slightly higher network speeds too, you might consider running an entry node instead.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    How much traffic does a relay node use? Some residential ISPs have data caps. I know Cox has one for a terabyte or something.
    - tgragnato 6y ago
      That's a no brainer https://support.torproject.org/operators/limit-total-bandwidth/ https://support.torproject.org/operators/limit-total-bandwid...
  - cmeacham98 6y ago
    What's the difference between a relay and entry node (shouldn't these be indistinguishable, I thought that was part of the point of Tor)? Unless by "entry node" you mean bridge?

by zaik 6y ago

I have been running a relay node from my home network for 5 months now. Aside from sometimes melting my cheap router with concurrent connections I did not notice anything out of ordinary.

tialaramex 6y ago

Relay nodes are unobjectionable. Nothing interesting happens as far as your neighbours are concerned, traffic passes in and out of your node, but that's true for any number of application protocols of no interest. However the comment you're replying to talks about exit nodes, these are potentially obnoxious for your neighbours, as from them of course emerges traffic that somebody else didn't want to admit to sending. Now, perhaps it's a young gay guy in a country where homosexuality is illegal, reading an essay by someone who has been in a similar situation. Or a fourteen year old looking at pornography bypassing a "family filter" But more likely it's vandals trying to replace every mention of a pop star they don't like on Wikipedia with the words "Jerk Poop-head", a spammer sending piles of unsolicited commercial email, or a botnet operator trying to send C&C packets to direct a DDoS. For this you will of course get blocked by various services, and explaining it isn't actually you might prevent getting arrested in many jurisdictions, but won't mean everybody lets you use their services from this obviously tainted connection. So, doing that on your personal ISP connection is probably a bad idea.

zaik 6y ago
Wikipedia blocks all editing from Tor exit nodes. You even have to apply for IP block exemption when you want to edit from Tor while logged in.
whatatita 6y ago
I'd like to highlight the point you made about running a non-exit node from your home network: they're unobjectionable. Running any node strengthens the TOR network as it provides more anonymous paths for users to connect through. Since running a middle node from home doesn't cause any issues for you, doing so is a great way to contribute to the network. If you have a machine that's always on, has slightly higher specs, and you have slightly higher network speeds too, you might consider running an entry node instead.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  How much traffic does a relay node use? Some residential ISPs have data caps. I know Cox has one for a terabyte or something.
  - tgragnato 6y ago
    That's a no brainer https://support.torproject.org/operators/limit-total-bandwidth/ https://support.torproject.org/operators/limit-total-bandwid...
- cmeacham98 6y ago
  What's the difference between a relay and entry node (shouldn't these be indistinguishable, I thought that was part of the point of Tor)? Unless by "entry node" you mean bridge?