Box for simple Tor node.

coderman coderman at protonmail.com
Sun Oct 13 15:32:16 PDT 2019


comments below,

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Sunday, October 13, 2019 10:15 PM, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
...

> This   https://www.amazon.com/CanaKit-Raspberry-4GB-Basic-Starter/dp/B07VYC6S56/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=raspberry+pi+4&qid=1571002803&sr=8-5  appears to be a representative sample of a Raspberry Pi 4 board, in kit form, 4 gigabyte of RAM (I guess they must mean SDCard, right, and not ordinary SRAM or DRAM?  SD wears out, right?), with cables, a clear plastic box.  $85 in quantity one.

there is indeed 4G of LPDDR4 SDRAM on board. you will want to include a small fan to avoid throttling while under heavy use. (ah, the kit you link includes a fan - excellent!)

> While hypothetically node operators might receive some sort of subsidy (in full or in part) for their internet-service cost, it's also plausible that their Internet payment will be their "skin in the game", their contribution to the project.  Centurylink offers 1 gigabit/second service for $65 plus tax.  The speed itself is only one part of the issue.  I think there is no data limit for their 1 gigabit service; their slower services may have a 1 terabyte/month limit.

i want to suggest NOT running a Tor node on a residential line.  be advised that your service limit is NOT your monthly bandwidth limit! (i have gigabit symmetric, but can only use 1TB/month before incurring serious overage charges...)  consumer internet is also prone to "TCP RST" traffic management (e.g. to fight torrent looking traffic) which interrupts circuits, and some ISPs even mangle DNS, which can get your relay marked as "BAD".

see also: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorRelayGuide#Partone:decidingtorunarelay
"It is required that a Tor relay be allowed to use a minimum of 100 GByte of outbound traffic"

> This is a list of proposed 'improvements' to TOR.   https://blog.torproject.org/tor-design-proposals-how-we-make-changes-our-protocol
> No doubt SOMEWHERE there is a list of 'proposed improvements that we know the TOR structure will never agree to because they will be considered 'too good' '.   Shouldn't we use those, too?   Especially those!

Tor has a situation where they must keep compatibility with the existing network, or introduce partitioning attacks and compromise the anonymity of their users.

this is actually a hard problem - i think the future is in running parallel overlays, and routing application level services over the best overlay for the given purpose at that time.

for a slew of research beyond Tor, see:
https://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/

discussing the promising avenues a subject for another thread... :)

best regards,
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