" It's my understanding that BitTorrent is less of a bandwidth hog as it is a connections/circuits hog. These are expensive to create and you can't balance your BitTorrenting by hosting a high-bandwidth node because to have 0 net effect on the network, you'd have to host a circuit's worth of nodes for every circuit you're using for BitTorrent connections. "
Bandwidth is surely finite but I'd bet safe to calculate. I would think it easy to reach zero net, starting at minimally six times your use. Circuits are a separate issue. AFAIK, they are just consumers of state on the nodes... CPU, RAM, TCP, etc. I can see where adding a node [any node] in at 6x [or any x] would help distribute that load as well. Other than between the tracker, BT spawns a bunch of bandwith filled pipes, up to some number of peers limit in the app. What is, if any, the relationship between IPv4 TCP flows and Tor circuit usage? That could help calculate the replacement value for non-bandwidth node resources. > Am I wrong, Tor Old Ones? I sure haven't got that far in reading to guess yet, so yeah, if someone has a hunch, that would be interesting. Maybe 6 nodes that add up to 6x bandwidth or something. Not sure about anyone else, but I do think that with the way things are going on the internet, more people will be looking to anonymous systems in general to supplant it for their 'filesharing' and other interests. That accumulation might be unstoppable. So hopefully those sorts of uses are being thought after and researched/planned/coded for.
