[tor-relays] Seeking Advice on Running Multiple Tor Relays or A Bridge

[Gary C. New]

Alessandro,

I would recommend running bridges (opposed to relays) on a home network to avoid browing issues with your bank, news, etc as these entities often block Tor relays and not bridges.
Respectfully,

Gary 

    On Saturday, July 6, 2024, 3:07:52 PM MDT, Roger Dingledine <arma at torproject.org> wrote:  
 
 On Sat, Jul 06, 2024 at 06:34:37PM +0000, Alessandro Greco via tor-relays wrote:
> I have some experience running a Tor relay, and I am now interested in setting up another one. I plan to do this using my home internet connection, which is an FTTH line with bandwidth up to 2 Gbps.

Thanks for running a relay!

> I have read that it is possible to run multiple relays on the same node, but I am unsure how to configure this.

If you're using the tor deb (e.g. on Debian or Ubuntu), it comes with
a tool to set up multiple tors. "man tor-instance-create" to get started.

There is also the possibility of using the fancy automated
deployment tools that some of the bigger relay operators here
use, which probably only makes sense if you are already familiar
with these automation tools (a popular one based on ansible:
https://github.com/nusenu/ansible-relayor ).

In either case, make sure you have enough memory in your system to
handle each Tor relay: relays can use 1 or 2 gigabytes of memory each
during normal operation, but when the network is under load it can go
much higher than that.

> Additionally, I am curious about what would be most beneficial for the Tor network today: a highly resilient bridge or multiple relays managed from the same node?

If you have the bandwidth (which it sounds like you do), the multiple
fast relays will be much more useful to the network.

See also https://2019.www.torproject.org/docs/faq#RelayOrBridge

> Is it feasible to operate both at the same time? This is probably not the best idea since the bridge's IP address would be public, right?

It is technically possible yes, but as you say, having a public relay
on the IP address will undermine the effectiveness of your bridge on
that IP address.

The same logic is also why we don't recommend running two different
kinds of bridges on a single IP address: if one of them gets discovered
and the censor blocks by IP address, then the other will stop working too.

> I am looking for guidance on the best course of action to support the Tor community.
> Thank you in advance for your assistance,Aleff.

Thanks for wanting to help!

--Roger

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