[tor-relays] MaxAdvertisedBandwidth advice please

[mick]

Hi all

Following a couple of my earlier messages to the list (about alleged
DDOS on my node) I started up a new relay only node with digitalocean
(thanks to Roman Mamedov for the pointer).

In order to test their service I signed up for the minimal sized
"droplet" (VPS) - 256Mb RAM, 1 core, 20Gb disk. Very quickly the VPS
ramped up to over 1000 tor connections and a throughput of 25Mbit/s
with a daily total traffic of 230 GiB. Absolutely astonishing when
compared to the appalling service I was getting from my node at
thrustvps. (After my complaints I was told "This is standard procedure
for our clients, all nodes are on a 100mBits network, the node you are
currently on shares that connection with 59 other virtual servers".) So
no wonder the service was crap.

But this morning I noticed that the new server had stopped and tor
says in it's log "Your computer is too slow to handle this many circuit
creation requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth
config option or choosing a m ore restricted exit policy."

I've never had the luxury of encountering this problem before, But
clearly the network connectivity at digitalocean is not a limiting
factor, and the resource of the VPS is. I monitored usage for the
first day or so and top never showed any CPU bottleneck of high load
averages, but memory was almost maxed out.

The manual entry for "MaxAdvertisedBandwidth" is not particularly
clear because it does not specify whether the bytes|KB|MB|GB is per
second or a maximum for some other period. And I do not have the
experience to know what rate would best be set on a node with
limited memory (though I will buy larger nodes iof this test works
out over a longer period) but apparently unlimited network capacity.
So my question is, what can colleages recommend as a suitable maximum
rate which will allow my node to provide maximum utility to the tor
network without falling over? 

Many thanks in advance.

Mick
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