[tor-relays] What's the timeline for a Tor relay to start routing a large amount of traffic?

[Matt Traudt]

On 4/27/18 14:34, Nathaniel Suchy (Lunorian) wrote:
> I started to run a few Tor Exit Relays (My exit policy only allows ports
> 80 and 443 only to minimize the amount of abuse) a few days ago.
> Currently Tor Metrics shows the relays are only advertising 700Kb/s
> despite the fact the minimum port speed on the VPSes I host on is
> 100Mb/s. I've been told by friends of mine it's because it's a new relay
> - at what point does the relay start to route a large amount of traffic
> equivalent to the port speed.
> 
> I'm hoping to contribute to the Tor Project in a variety of ways over
> the next few months and the summer and starting relays is a first step.
> 
> Cheers,
> Nathaniel
> 

Thank you for running an exit relay!

A relays advertised bandwidth is usually the maximum amount of traffic
it has seen over a recent 10 second period. Tor does not try to
determine and then advertise your NIC (or port) speed.

You might still be ramping up because you're a new relay, yes. But
because of current network conditions, exits tend to reach their full
potential much quicker than non-exits. The "lifecycle of a new relay"
blog post doesn't really apply to exits.

Depending on a wide variety of factors -- many of which are vague and
hard to reason about -- you may never see your relay push 100 Mbps.
These factors include things like what your machine has for CPU and
memory (easy to understand); but also things like how close you are to
the bandwidth authorities that are measuring you, how close you are to
the web servers they are using to help measure you, where you are in
relation to other relays in the network, how many people are using Tor,
how many instances of the bandwidth scanning tool are currently not
crashed, and whether the bandwidth authorities have switched to a new
tool (maybe someday soon!).

Please do not be discouraged if you never reach 100 Mbps. I run many
relays (some exits) and I don't think they tend to reach the maximum
possible speeds the machine is capable of. They also vary wildly in how
much they are used. Just look at this[0] relay's 1 year graph.

If after a few months you still are using a small part of your available
NIC speed, you should consider running a second relay on the same
machine. You can run two relays per IPv4 address.

Thanks again for running a relay.

Matt

[0]:
https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/91516595837183D9ECD1318D00723A8676F4731C