[tor-relays] Bandwidth

[Sebastian Hahn]

On Jul 7, 2011, at 1:48 AM, Tomas Sironi wrote:
> Hi people. In the Tor manual, the next options are specified:

Hi Tomas,

thanks for running a relay!

>  - BandwidthRate
>  - RelayBandwidthRate
> 
> However i don't get to see the difference between those two. I imagined the first one is the bandwidth of tor being a client, and the second for the relay (server). But then i read this in the BandwidthRate description, breaking my previous supposition: 
> 
> ... If you want to run a relay in the public network, this needs to be at the very least 20 KB ...
> 
> I know those options limit the bandwidth but i don't know exactly which affects what.

The idea here is that BandwidthRate sets the limit of
relay + client traffic (and many people only set
BandwidthRate and leave RelayBandwidthRate alone,
and that's fine). But if you also use Tor as a client then
the relay will take up so much bandwidth that the client
has no bandwidth left over, so you have set a lower
RelayBandwidthRate so that there is some spare
bandwidth left over for client usage.

> I'm running my Tor as client and relay, so i'm a little bit confused.
> 
> Can anyone explain that for me? Thanks!

I hope this clears it up? If not, don't hesitate to
ask further.

Sebastian