On 1 Aug 2017, at 07:53, King Queen kingqueenits@gmail.com wrote:

hi,

I have a relatively new VPS on CockBox running a Tor exit node. It's the $10/month one https://box.cock.li/ which means it has very fast network (Gigabit I think) but I can only use 1TB per month.

I've done some reading round of previous posts on here over the year, and as a result I have variously tried / toyed with RelayBandwidthRate (set at 150KBps so it averages ~800gb/month) and with AccountingMax (15GB with AccountingStart day 00:00)

But I don't know what's best for the network. Is it best to have a very fast exit relay for a small portion of the day (so AccountingMax set but no RelayBandwidthRate), a not-so-fast exit relay for more of the day (so AccountingMax set at 15Gb and RelayBandwidthRate at 250KBps) or a slower-still exit relay for all the day (RelayBandwidthRate 150KBps and no AccountingMax?) What is of the most benefit to the Tor network?

It's best for client latency to have fast relays that are up for some of the time.

It's best for bandwidth measurement and allocation if these fast relays are up for part of the *month*, not part of the day. (This only works for relays with a monthly quota.)

So I'd recommend using AccountingMax on a monthly schedule with AccountingStart set to the date and time that your limit resets.

You might want to allow a small amount of data for DNS and package updates. 1 GB is usually more than enough.

Using a local DNS caching server will help here, and it's better for user privacy, too.

(Slow relays that are up for all of the month are better for diversity, but only if they get used!)

Also: I read somewhere that Tor should un-hibernate at a random point each day and not directly at 00:00 as set in AccountingStart, but that doesn't appear to be what happens. It just sets off at midnight. To combat any deleterious effect that lots of people doing this might have on the Tor network, if I do use AccountingMax, should I set AccountingStart to a random time in the day?

Tor will only start at a random time if it thinks your bandwidth will be used up before by the end of the interval. It might take a few weeks for your relay to use all the bandwidth.

If you do set AccountingStart on a monthly schedule and set a particular hour as the start time, it will only work on 0.3.1.1-alpha or later: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22245

In previous Tor versions, the hour and minute are ignored for monthly schedules.

T

-- Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)

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