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Does anyone know of any service providers which are friendly to Tor? I'm not sure I'm comfortable with running an exit node (yet), but I think I'm competent en

Does anyone know of any service providers which are friendly to Tor? I'm not sure I'm comfortable with running an exit node (yet), but I think I'm competent enough to run a secure relay node or two in various geographical locations. Anyone here run a dedicated Tor node? I'm curious on bandwidth and horsepower required. I would imagine even a modest VPS could handle running the service. I'd really like to support the Tor network on a technical level, to increase the size of the crowd as it were.

pronoiac 15y ago
Tor-friendly service providers, from their wiki: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISPs https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISP...
- SageRaven 15y ago
  Excellent source. Thank you.
icarus_drowning 15y ago
I have a box that sits in the closet and runs a bridge/relay. Bandwidth on a commercial grade cable connection is minimal, and I don't notice it at all. I've successfully run Tor nodes on boxes with 300 Mhz processors and only 128MB of memory, so yeah, I'm guessing a tiny VPS wouldn't have trouble with it. I don't run an exit, and won't be running an exit, but it is simple enough to run a bridge/relay that I'm surprised how few people do. A really helpful piece of software is arm: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/arm-release-140 https://blog.torproject.org/blog/arm-release-140 really useful way of monitoring how much bandwidth tor is using. It also allows you to edit/reset you torrc with a couple of keys. It keeps stats on how much data your passing through the network too, which is pretty cool. I've had no problems from my ISP (Comcast), but then again I do pay for their commercial grade service, which doesn't have ToS restrictions on proxies. (I used to run a node out of my residential Comcast connection too-- they didn't seem to mind).
- SageRaven 15y ago
  You run on a public IP or over NAT? If NAT works, I could stick a little always-on Acer netbook in a closet to participate on the network over my 15Mb cable service. Would save a fair bit of money over dedicated server/VPS. Thanks for sharing.
  - icarus_drowning 15y ago
    I've done it both ways. Either way, it's best practice to open a few recommended ports, so overall I don't see a ton of difference. NAT seemes to work just fine, so long as tor can establish a few outside connections. (A box sitting behind a NAT router has relayed about 10 GB of data since I reset it a few days ago, so obviously something is working).
deleted 15y ago
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pronoiac 15y ago

Tor-friendly service providers, from their wiki: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISPs https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISP...

SageRaven 15y ago
Excellent source. Thank you.

icarus_drowning 15y ago

I have a box that sits in the closet and runs a bridge/relay. Bandwidth on a commercial grade cable connection is minimal, and I don't notice it at all. I've successfully run Tor nodes on boxes with 300 Mhz processors and only 128MB of memory, so yeah, I'm guessing a tiny VPS wouldn't have trouble with it. I don't run an exit, and won't be running an exit, but it is simple enough to run a bridge/relay that I'm surprised how few people do. A really helpful piece of software is arm: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/arm-release-140 https://blog.torproject.org/blog/arm-release-140 really useful way of monitoring how much bandwidth tor is using. It also allows you to edit/reset you torrc with a couple of keys. It keeps stats on how much data your passing through the network too, which is pretty cool. I've had no problems from my ISP (Comcast), but then again I do pay for their commercial grade service, which doesn't have ToS restrictions on proxies. (I used to run a node out of my residential Comcast connection too-- they didn't seem to mind).

SageRaven 15y ago
You run on a public IP or over NAT? If NAT works, I could stick a little always-on Acer netbook in a closet to participate on the network over my 15Mb cable service. Would save a fair bit of money over dedicated server/VPS. Thanks for sharing.
- icarus_drowning 15y ago
  I've done it both ways. Either way, it's best practice to open a few recommended ports, so overall I don't see a ton of difference. NAT seemes to work just fine, so long as tor can establish a few outside connections. (A box sitting behind a NAT router has relayed about 10 GB of data since I reset it a few days ago, so obviously something is working).

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]