On Saturday 02 Nov 2013 17:10:50 Moritz Bartl wrote:
As one of the large operators that indeed allows exiting on all ports except 25: This is on purpose. I don't consider applications that choose random ports as bad, I don't consider file sharing per se as bad. I don't want to interfere with user traffic. I wish I could leave 25 open as well, but our ISPs don't like that.
I suppose you and I have different philosophies regarding this. :)
If the paper I linked earlier can be considered reflective of the entire Tor network, knowing that 54% of the traffic on Tor is BitTorrent traffic is frustrating.
Like you and others, I'd like to see people take advantage of Tor, rather than simply abuse it. I have a VPS running a middle relay and I've had to restrict the line rate on it to 3Mb/s to avoid going over the 1TB monthly quota and avoid the relay from hibernating.
Knowing that more than half that traffic is BitTorrent traffic is disheartening when
a) I will happily support Tor for its intended purpose (I hate anyone who tries to control/negate free speech) and
b) I know full well, as we all do, that 90%+ of BitTorrent traffic is copyrighted works.
As I said earlier, if Tor was 100,000+ nodes strong with 100Mb/s per node and unlimited bandwidth nobody would care. Unfortunately, that isn't the case and the BitTorrent users very obviously don't know or care about the very real effect they are having.
Don't get me wrong, it's not like I hate BitTorrent and have a crusade against it - I don't. In fact I use it regularly. :p I'd just like a way of actively discouraging its use on Tor, and as far as I can see the line is drawn (quite literally) at the exits.
Best,