[tor-relays] Determining geographical locations for a new exit relay would help most

Fri May 1 17:01:45 UTC 2015

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Hi Seth,

> I'm standing up a new exit relay on the VULTR network. How would a 
> person go about determining which location is in most need of
> additional exit relay capacity?

thanks for taking network diversity into account when setting up new
relays!

It might be oversimplified but using compass with group by country
ordered by consensus weight (or in your case exit probability) shows
you where most of tor network capacity is currently located. The goal
is to setup relays in new or rarely used locations.

So by using compass your list would look like this, ordered from
better to less good:

* (AU) Sydney, Australia (0.01% CW)
* (Asia) Tokyo, Japan (0.8% CW)
* UK (4.6% CW)
* US (10.1%)
* NL (12.4% CW)
* France (21.6%)
* DE (25.7% CW)
Note: the is a current snapshot and numbers change but AU or JP is
better then DE (from a capacity divers. point of view) - this will
also be the case in a week or a month.

You might also want to consider the exit probability and use that in
addition or instead of CW.

I don't know if VULTR has multiple ASes but if they do you might also
want to have a look at the group by AS results (if they allow you to
choose).