Box for simple Tor node.

[John Newman]

On October 13, 2019 10:32:16 PM UTC, coderman <coderman at protonmail.com> wrote:
>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!)
>


It would of course need an sd card for the OS install.
There are probably cheaper SoC offerings that are fast
enough, but the rpi4 is a good choice, easy to work with.



>> 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".
>


I tend to agree.. if run from residential connections it would
make more sense to not try to use a huge amount of bandwidth,
and running an exit node will almost certainly bring trouble.

Then again, different providers offer and impose different levels of
scrutiny. Whatever the end product is it should be fully configurable,
but at a bare minimum the user should be able to control all the 
bandwidth settings and whether or not it's an exit node in a simple 
fashion.

VPS' are dirt cheap, and can be spun up with Linux or FreeBSD and
tor very quickly and easily. Not quite meeting Jim's requirements,
but it's really not that high a burden of technical knowledge to 
do, for those truly interested...



>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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