[tor-relays] FW: What's a "useful" relay?

[Rana]

@balbea16
 
Correction: your relay has 1400 connections, mine has 1300. Therefore my relay has less than 1% of the weight of your relay while having ALMOST THE SAME number of connections. Go figure…
 
From: tor-relays [mailto:tor-relays-bounces at lists.torproject.org] On Behalf Of Rana
Sent: Saturday, December 24, 2016 10:12 AM
To: tor-relays at lists.torproject.org
Subject: Re: [tor-relays] What's a "useful" relay?
 
@balbea16
 
>I am actually a little bit confused now. I am one of (as Rana knows) those Pi 3 based OR operators with daily changing IP address. My consensus weight is about 5,000, with a max. of 1,400 connections.  I would like to recomment, that the TOR org should publish minimum requirements to run a relay. And, if my kind of relays would bring disadvantage to the network, I would shut it off. So far, I think, that small and large relays in combination are good for anonymity. 
 
I am even more confused than you. My 1300 connections relay has a consensus weight <https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/707A9A3358E0D8653089AF32A097570A96400CC6>  of 38 (thirty eight). That’s less than 1% of your weight, despite having 26% the number of connections you have. Besides, I could never understand why people measure the “size” of the relay by the number of connections. My guess is you can have a large number of dead connections.
 
This is just another example of the lack of clear metrics and feedback to relay operators on the quality of their relay, including how well the relay is doing in terms of its usefulness to Tor, and especially of (direct or easily derived) actionable recommendations on how to improve its quality, including abandonment if it is harmful to Tor in its current form.
 
Rana
 
PS I guess this may not be that simple as possibly some relays are getting bashed because they are suspected of being rogue. Still, a mechanism of quality feedback is needed for the (hopefully the majority) of the relays that are run by bona fide volunteers.
 
 
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