[tor-relays] Tor relay on Verizon FiOS/FTTH: Advertised Bandwidth capped at ~19.5MiB/s

[Neel Chauhan]

Hi Roger,


> The very short answer is that this could all be normal.
> 
> You might find some of the ideas in this wiki page useful:
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/MyRelayIsSlow
> 
> Among the most important points:
> 
> * It's actually bad for the network for relays to be hitting their
> capacity -- since it means user traffic is intentionally delayed at
> that relay.

Good to know.

I know my relay can't hit 100% of its capacity 24/7. I want the 
"consensus weight" and the "advertised bandwidth" to see my bandwidth.

> * Exit relays tend to attract as much traffic as they can provide, 
> since
> exit capacity is scarce in the network right now. But for non-exit 
> relays,
> you shouldn't be surprised if they don't fill their available 
> bandwidth.
> The traffic your relay receives has to do with how the load balancing
> works, and actual total traffic from clients varies over time.

Understood.

> * The "torflow" bandwidth authority measurement system is pretty 
> clearly
> broken, in that it measures relays badly. This is known, and we've been
> working to fix it, but "how come I have this weird bandwidth weight"
> is a common question over the past few years. :(

Makes sense. I hope torflow gets replaced soon.

> So in summary, it might be that something on your side is unnecessarily
> limiting your relay performance, but it could also just be that the 
> "luck
> of the draw" from the load balancing system is what gave you this load.

I thought of many reasons: my router, Verizon's backbone, Verizon's FiOS 
edge network, or just Tor's crappy load balancing system (which I hopes 
gets fixed soon).

> If you want to use more of your bandwidth, consider running two relays
> as somebody suggested in this thread. Or just sit back and be happy at
> your nice relay contribution. :)

I set up another relay to increase my bandwidth. If that doesn't help, I 
will look into replacing my WRT1900AC with a pfSense or Ubiquiti box.

> (Another option is that you could open up your exit policy, but that's
> probably a poor idea for a relay running at home.)

I probably won't. Aside from the obvious reasons, I won't run an exit 
from home because:

  * I would get blacklisted from too many websites
  * Most ISPs don't want to give you you more than one IPv4 address to 
separate Tor traffic from everything else unless you go business class
  * Verizon would probably notice my "exit" relay from abuse complaints 
and then would say "you can't do this on FiOS" unless I go business 
class

I run an exit from a dedicated server (not a 
OVH/Online.net/Scaleway/Hetzner, but one from a host called GTHost).

> Thanks!
> --Roger

You're welcome.

-Neel

===

https://www.neelc.org/