[tor-relays] Read/written bytes on a relay differ

[George Hartley]

Whenever my exit node gets a guard probability percentage > 0, then I see this happen as well.

I always thought that it is just clients using the exit as a Guard, so it now receives 3x encrypted packets from the clients, decrypts the packet, and forwards it, causing more Rx than Tx in bandwidth.

Here's mine:

https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/0F8538398C61ECBE83F595E3716F7CE7E4C77B21

Notice how the traffic curve matched perfectly when there were zero clients using the exit as a guard, and deviated as soon as there was a possibility for it to get randomly selected as guard?

This is just my guess though.

Alles Gute (since you are German),
George

On Wednesday, September 18th, 2024 at 6:35 PM, Richie <richie at zuviel.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 

> nothing of real concern, but out of curiosity: since some years now i
> use overhead traffic on my ISP for Tor, with a small home relay burning
> some 3 to 4 MB/Sec. Usual middle relay plus V2Dir (and HSdir some days
> after last reboot). Since some weeks now, the read/written bytes differ
> quite significantly, and i never experieced sth like that for a relevant
> timespan before.
> 

> Is this a sign of more "reading directory services" on the relay? (maybe
> short reqests and verbose replys), some new kind of attack, whatever?
> 

> direct metrics-Link via
> https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/11FC7D9C7D8DF74326B90EC71C10173279738B8F
> and screenie attached. Again, no big issue, just curiosity. And if its
> some kind of bug, i'd be happy to hand over more info.
> 

> thx to everyone maintaining and running this stuff,
> Richie
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