[tor-talk] Tor Relay Smartphone App

[Griffin Boyce]

I wrote:
> Isis,
> 
> Why, then, has there been discussion of the use of Raspberry Pis
> without mention of this?

   People have taken it upon themselves to run relays on raspis, but 
that's not exactly Tor's fault.

   It seems really obvious not to run a relay off of an extremely 
low-power computer.  IRL, I always try to convince people not to do it, 
but it rarely works.  Honestly I would recommend against it even for a 
bridge, but there's something to be said for having increased address 
diversity at the expense of performance.  (But I *also* don't want 
bridge users to be penalized for needing to use a bridge).

   Raspberry Pis are decent for most running hidden services, however 
they suck royally for relays.

   But to answer your actual question: because we each only have a finite 
amount of time and can't respond to every thread.  As for what to run a 
relay on, there are very small servers that run about $100 that get the 
job done.

   I follow the "1 rule" -- At a bare minimum, 1GB RAM & 1Ghz CPU, 
connected via ethernet, with "RelayBandwidthRate 1000 KB" set in torrc. 
This is for a dedicated machine that only runs a relay. Not a raspi, not 
your phone, not a cafe wifi in Kamchatka. Test your internet speed 
before setting up your relay and you may be pleasantly surprised at how 
much throughput you can get. =) Helping the network is really important, 
but you want to make sure that you're not actually hurting the network 
on accident.

best,
Griffin

-- 
"I believe that usability is a security concern; systems that do
not pay close attention to the human interaction factors involved
risk failing to provide security by failing to attract users."
~Len Sassaman