On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 04:37:29PM +0100, Nick wrote:
I'm probably going to move to a new ISP soon, and may well be able to get a fibre 20Mbps up connection, which is a nice thought. The question I have is whether my little ~1GHz home server box (a weird little x86 thing, I can dig out more specs if they're relevant) would be able to relay that level of traffic without issue? The TorExitGuidelines page on the wiki mentions that one "modern" CPU core should be able to push 100Mbps, but my server is probably 6/7 years old. It's a VIA board, which IIRC might have some hardware crypto acceleration or something - is that something that would be likely to help things if I can get it working?
A 1GHz VIA is probably good up to 20-30 Mbps. You shouldn't even need the crypto accelerator to satisfy that (although if the accelerator works with OpenSSL it will save a bunch of CPU).
Doing much else on that machine (like serving files) will probably run into CPU headroom problems, though.
P.S. Are there any known cases of law enforcement seizing equipment or otherwise terrorising people for running home exit nodes? I would like to imagine that Tor is well known enough in such circles that such action would be rather unlikely nowadays. I know at least some remailer operators host stuff from their homes, but maybe that's lower risk.
Yes, there are cases of law enforcement seizing all computer gear from a house with a exit node -- not just the exit node computer. Most recently in Austria in a child porn investigation.
Due to the incompetence of such law enforcement, I unfortunately cannot recommend to run an exit node at your home if your computers are necessary for your livelihood. Running a non-exit relay is much lower risk of being unjustly accused due to law enforcement incompetence.
-andy