[tor-relays] new relay package for Ubuntu 16.04+

[Roger Dingledine]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 09:47:56AM -0400, Chad MILLER wrote:
> I made a tor-middle-relay package, so the TVs, Wifi Routers,
> Toasters, Self-driving Cars, Phones... of the world that are running
> that new kind of Ubuntu (or other OS that implements this package
> system!) can also help the Tor network.
>[...]
> Once you have it installed, try
> $ sudo /snap/bin/tor-middle-relay.configure
> to bump up your bandwidth limit over the conservative defaults.

Nice idea!

Other people here have very valid points about the security and
maintability side of things, but I'll add another point: It looks like the
conservative defaults you mention are a BandwidthRate and BandwithBurst
of 75 KBytes.

That tiny level of rate limiting basically ensures that none of these
relays will ever get the Fast flag, so they will never be used by
actual users.

The current recommendation on
https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-relay-debian is to allow at least
250 KBytes/s each way. And even those will be tiny and rarely used
compared to the bigger relays.

I wonder if your project would be better at producing bridges?
https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#RelayOrBridge
Especially since you could include obfs4 (or even more!) support as part
of the bundle.

--Roger