[tor-relays] OBFS-4 Bridge Relay with 0 clients seen in more than one month

[Kenneth Freeman]

I've wondered about this myself. I'm currently running my longtime relay
Anosognosia (ORPort 9001, DirPort 9030) on my primary 32-bit Linux box,
and a spanking new obsf4 bridge relay on AnosognosiaToo, my secondary,
64-bit Linux box (ORPort9001), but although the latter has been getting
traffic on test circuits I keep getting the error message that my server
has not managed to confirm that its ORPort is reachable. In the past six
hours I've had no unique clients, but given this thread I'm going to let
it ride.

The two machines pull double duty as 24/7 heating units during the
colder months, so what would be their most effective contribution to
the Tor ecology? Relay/relay, relay/bridge, or bridge/bridge? (During
the hottest week I only keep one computer going and perforce operate a
solo relay.)

On 06/02/2016 06:32 PM, demfloro wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I'm running a Tor relay which is working fine and a Tor Bridge Relay
>> on port 995 (ORPort is 465) which is reachable from the outside that
>> has been running for more than one month and has never been contacted
>> by any client. I've tried to use it with Tor Browser from outside my
>> own network and it works fine. Does it take so long for an OBFS4
>> bridge relay to become known and used by someone?
>>
>> Best regards,
>>    Freedom For All
> Hello,
> I started one bridge with on 443 port in April 2 on standalone IP address and it did not have any traffic for about a week IIRC. 
> Now it is used quite well:
> Jun 02 17:19:57.000 [notice] Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 29 days 17:59 hours, with 43 circuits open. I've sent 137.71 GB and received 131.83 GB.
> Jun 02 17:19:57.000 [notice] Heartbeat: In the last 6 hours, I have seen 27 unique clients.
> Jun 02 23:19:57.000 [notice] Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 29 days 23:59 hours, with 63 circuits open. I've sent 140.81 GB and received 134.84 GB.
> Jun 02 23:19:57.000 [notice] Heartbeat: In the last 6 hours, I have seen 38 unique clients
> 
> Although I do not use only obfs4 transport, here is line from torrc:
> ServerTransportPlugin obfs2,obfs3,obfs4 exec /usr/bin/obfs4proxy managed
> 
> I suspect that if IP address is in Tor consensus then it's not that good as if bridge was on separate IP address. Main reason is because bridges are supposed to be "hidden". As I understood in your setup you have regular relay on port 465 and bridge on port 995, sharing the same IP address.
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> 
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