Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Karsten Loesing]

On 1/8/13 10:40 PM, Moritz Bartl wrote:
> I wrote a small incapable script [4] that visualizes how often a relay
> is a "fast" relay over time. In its current form, it is not very
> helpful, but slightly modified to output monthly overviews or just a
> percentage figure per relay, it might already be good enough to define
> when a reward is granted (after it became part of the rewards program)
> and when/if the operator needs to do additional explaining of downtimes
> etc. Feedback and patches welcome.

Please see https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7895 for my
feedback.

Best,
Karsten


> [4]
> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-November/001725.html

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Moritz Bartl]

Hi,

On 23.07.2012 20:58, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> We've lined up our first funder (BBG, aka http://www.voanews.com/),
> and they're excited to have us start as soon as we can. They want to
> sponsor 125+ fast exits.

From what I understand, the reimbursement process is blocking on
legal/contractual issues Andrew has to figure out first. The German Wau
Holland Stiftung (WHS) [1] has agreed to channel donations towards exit
operators, both for organizations and individuals. Amongst other things,
this will offset load from Torproject to have it further focus on
development, and allow for easy wire transfers within European borders.

I think a good approach would be to call it "Tor Exit Operation Rewards
Program" (or something). I don't know what TPO's or WHS's stance is on
this, but for media purposes, we could also make it be a thing that WHS
offers, not TPO?

A relay operator who would be eligible for rewards, but does not want to
take the money can 'donate' it to WHS instead for the specific purpose
of having it used for exit bandwidth by other community members.

Let me summarize the reactions to Rogers blog post in July [2] and
the/this tor-relays thread [3].

Some of the comments on the blog post were not very welcoming of the
whole idea. That was to be expected, given the initial money comes from
"CIA's propaganda outlet".

The feedback on tor-relays was positive. No big objections to the idea
in general. Conversation derailed into how much the actual costs for
operating exits are.

Some overloading of the term "fast exit" happened, and all tools
mentioned below use the same definition (95+ Mbit/s configured bandwidth
rate, 5000+ KB/s advertised bw capacity, exits to ports 80,443,554,1755,
at most 2 relays per /24). Being a "fast relay" based on that definition
can be seen as a basic requirement for a reward.

https://compass.torproject.org/ lists fast exits and almost fast exits.
https://metrics.torproject.org/fast-exits.html has nice graphs on
development of such relays over time. We might want to add additional
caveats, to avoid too many exits at one AS, for example, and other
diversity criteria mentioned in Rogers initial post. There hasn't been
much feedback on that so far. If we decide whether someone can become
part of the rewards program on a per-case basis and not only on a given
set of hard criteria -- since we want good relationships with the
operators and sustainable growth -- that might entail in hate speech and
what not, so maybe we should have more strict (but fair) limits like
"not more than X relays per AS" and "not more than Y relays per
country", and also "not more than Z relays per operator". Thoughts on
how we can make this as fair as possible?

I wrote a small incapable script [4] that visualizes how often a relay
is a "fast" relay over time. In its current form, it is not very
helpful, but slightly modified to output monthly overviews or just a
percentage figure per relay, it might already be good enough to define
when a reward is granted (after it became part of the rewards program)
and when/if the operator needs to do additional explaining of downtimes
etc. Feedback and patches welcome.

A good suggestion was to get the word out to hackerspaces to find (A)
organizations that already exist that (B) consist of people who (my
opinion) should be aligned to the goals of Tor. I have been reaching out
to hackerspaces all along, but I will try to do so in larger scale once
we have a defined reimbursement process. I have tried to lobby the CCC
to suggest to its chapters to have a simple checkbox on member
registration forms towards running Tor exits, and then either the local
space would start a new exit or pass the money upstream to CCC eV or WHS.

On July 27th, 2012 Anonymous said [blog comment]:
> Pay someone who answers all abuse complaints for Tor funded exit nodes
> in a timely manner. The individual running an exit node would be the
> technical contact and all complaints would be handled by the sole
> abuse contact. This would take some burden from the operators and the
> answers to complaints would be consistent.
> This person could also answer inquiries about Tor in a professional
> manner fostering public relations.

I don't think that's a bad idea. We could offer people to list
ab...@torservers.net as abuse contact for their exits. Answering them is
already my duty, and if this is something TPO likes I could see me doing
the additional load for other relays as well. I don't think there are
any legal implications of doing so; the operator would remain technical
contact.

All in all, the questions Roger raised in his original post are still
interesting to discuss. See [4].

[1] http://www.wauland.de/
[2] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/turning-funding-more-exit-relays
[3]
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-July/thread.html#1433
[4]
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-November/001725.html

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/

Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Martin Algö]

Hi Roger,

Thanks for your answer :)
It's funny that you mention dfri.se, because they e-mailed me (and all
swedish relay operators i believe) yesterday and I'm lurking in their IRC
channel (and #tor) as I write this.
I also managed to join the tor-relays list, so I've had a lot to read
lately. I'm CC'ing this to them as well, so let's see if it gets to where
it's supposed to. :)

Cheers!
//Martin

2012/8/14 Roger Dingledine 

> (Adding the tor-assistants cc back in -- I'm not so good at handling
> mail to me directly, and tor-assistants is a closed list of other Tor
> developers, so hopefully it isn't too impolite to add it.)
>
> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 12:42:03PM +0200, Martin Algö wrote:
> > Hello Roger,
> >
> > My answers first:
> >
> > - What do you currently pay for hosting/bandwidth, and how much bandwidth
> > do you get for that?
> > I'm running my relay from home. I have a 100Mbit connection and for that
> i
> > pay roughly $65 USD (450 SEK).
> >
> > - Is it a stable hosting situation? For example, how do they handle
> > abuse complaints so far?
> > So far I've been running my relay for about 18 months. The Tor server
> uses
> > a total of about 50Mbit constantly in both directions (I limited it
> because
> > I want some bandwidth for myself as well) and I have not heard a peep
> from
> > my ISP. It should be noted that my ISP (Bahnhof, Sweden) have been known
> > for engaging in discussions about privacy in general and trying to
> protect
> > their users from things like ACTA/IPRED. They even supply their own
> > anonymity VPN service.
> > I tried contacting them once to talk about Tor, but whoever at helpdesk
> > that got my email didn't know what I was talking about so I gave that up,
> > thinking that I shouldnt rock the boat unless necessary. :)
>
> Great. I wish there were more people like you in Sweden. :)
>
> > - Is your hosting situation one where it could make sense for us to
> > reimburse your bandwidth costs? (Some people have a deal through their
> > employer, friend, etc where they don't pay for hosting.)
> > Yes. In my case, I use half my bandwidth and so it would make sense to
> pay
> > me half my connection fee. Something that I would like much more though,
> > would be a promise of economic assistance in case of juridical problems.
> > The way i see it, I don't give any money to charity, such as Red Cross
> etc.
> > but I contribute bandwidth for a value of $30-35 every month to help
> > anonymity and uncensored access to the internet for user that need it.
> > (Along with users that use it for bad things as well, but that is a
> > tradeoff I'm willing to make for now.)
>
> Good idea. Do you know about dfri.se? They are running some fast exit
> relays in Sweden in an organized way. I bet they could help with the
> legal side. I agree that it would be great to have some equivalent of the
> Tor Legal FAQ written with Sweden in mind. I'm cc'ing Linus (from dfri)
> in case he has any thoughts here.
>
> > relay if you didn't have to pay for it?
> > This is an interesting question! Maybe I could buy a VPS somewhere? I'm
> the
> > local "IT guy" at my office so I might be able to buy a separate
> connection
> > there and even get some cheap hardware. This defenitely could require
> some
> > thinking on my part.
>
> Let us know if anything comes to mind, and what we can do to help.
>
> > - What else should we be asking here? :)
> > What do the relay operators want? :)
> > As stated above, for me it would mean much more to have some legal help
> to
> > fall back on if (when) shit hits the fan. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing
> > that many would-be high speed relay operators don't run relays because of
> > possible legal imlications.
>
> Right. Do you know good Swedish lawyers who might be able to help
> clarify how the laws there work?
>
> > I would love to join the discussion on the tor-relays list. I already
> > registered, but I never got around to using any mailing lists before, so
> > I'm not sure how to respond to your thread without breaking anything.
> Help
> > a n00b will you? :)
>
> Happy to help. I'd say just send the mail and see what happens. If
> you start with "I run a fast exit relay, and", I expect people will be
> very friendly.
>
> Thanks!
> --Roger
>
>
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Scott Bennett]

 On Fri, 27 Jul 2012 01:23:57 -0400 grarpamp 
wrote:
>>> 4) What exactly do we mean by diversity?
>>
>> I would look at this almost entirely from a jurisdictional and ISP level.  I
>> believe the biggest "sudden impact" threats to the tor network are going to
>> be from legal changes (jurisdictional, i.e. "save the children, nullroute
>> the nodes") and local business policy changes ("sorry tor customers, no more
>> tor egress from our DC due to complaints").
>
>I'm not sure which thread I mentioned this on so I'll put it here to be sure.
>I think one main thing needed is a project to catalog all the current
>exits as to their diversity...
>Box: ISP/hoster, AS, datacenter, country, upstream AS/Tier-n path,
>relay-operator
>Relay-operator: country
>
>Without that, seems like placing nodes amounts to, 'Well,
>we don't have any in Iran, let's go there'. If it turns out that
>IP is more or less fed as a courtesy from UAE across the
>gulf, there's not much gain. Repeat analysis for any of the
>above parameters.
>
>More nodes are probably good, just not all as USA, Equinix,
>Level3, with whatever hoster has a rack in all the DC's.

 I agree completely.  But I would also like to add that, aside from
Brasil, most of South America is still dark.  Central America is not
much better either.  Many of those states are not especially cooperative
with each other, politically speaking, yet they all need the benefits of
commerce associated with the Internet.  That combination strikes me as
beneficial to placement of tor relays in as many of those countries as
possible.
 Much of Africa may be worth closer examination for the same reasons.
 We really need to keep political diversity in view, especially given
the large fractions of the tor network currently concentrated inside a
mere handful of politically allied states.  The Dictator of the U.S., for
example, has already made the threat of shutting down the entire U.S.
portion of the Internet, including relaying between other countries,
which would certainly have a severely disruptive effect upon tor users
all around the globe were it to happen under today's distribution of tor
relays.  Even more drastic would be if any of, for example, the U.K.,
France, Germany, or the Netherlands were to follow suit.  Having countries
like Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador more tor-populated looks to
me like a good thing.
 Another point I'd like to make is that I don't see why having one
100 MB/s relay is somehow better than having ten 10 MB/s relays or 20
5 MB/s relays.  The superhigh-speed relays push operating system limits
on the number of connections.  Due to tor's design, distributing the
workload of such relays across multiple CPU cores is problematic.  Olaf
Selke got around that problem by running four nodes on a quad-core
machine with two IP addresses, but that meant that each node usually ran
at less than 15 MB/s.  For a superfast setup today, it might mean running
multiple 25 MB/s nodes in similar fashion to what Olaf did, rather than
a single 100 MB/s node.  The benefit to tor users would seem to me to
be the same either way, but the multinode method would not satisfy the
demand of the funding source, as I understood it.  Either way, though,
the operating system limits may place keep a lid on the actual tor
capacity of a very fast setup.
 From an infrastructure standpoint, I acknowledge that there can be
problems in setting up really fast relays in Latin American countries.
However, adding a few relays on the order of 500 - 5,000 KB/s in each
Latin American country could probably be done, even if it meant they
could only be set up in national capitals, which are mostly
megalopolises of several million people, and might involve making
special arrangements with the ISPs.  Other major cities in some
countries may also have the infrastructure to make moderately fast
relays possible.


  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
**
* Internet:   bennett at cs.niu.edu  *
**
* "A well regulated and disciplined militia, is at all times a good  *
* objection to the introduction of that bane of all free governments *
* -- a standing army."   *
*-- Gov. John Hancock, New York Journal, 28 January 1790 *
**
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[grarpamp]

>> Is there any justification for a low-bandwidth Tor node?

Other than the diversity of having more nodes around...
seems from discussions here that slower nodes see less
users. Which means they're not as likely to be blocked
by content providers for user misbehavior. This can be
valuable for the legit users who manually pick slower nodes
to see if they can get through.
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 05:49:34AM -0400, Motoko Kusanagi wrote:
> I am very interested in running 100 Mbit (maybe even more) exit nodes at 
> 100$/month, however, a question immediately comes to mind:
> When we say "100Mbit exit node", do we imply "really unmetered" traffic at 
> 100 Mbit, or do we mean "semi-reasonable traffic limit at 100Mbit speed".
> "Really unlimited", in my experience, oftentimes turns out to be somewhat 
> problematic. 

I don't think we necessarily need to have the 100mbit all to ourselves
(see the other discussions here about shared connections), but I think it
needs to be able to push a good fraction of 100mbit throughout the month.

So something that can handle 20-30TB/mo is in the right ballpark.

Note that many of our current 100mbit nodes are actually gbit nodes
that try to limit themselves to a long-term average (95th percentile)
of 100mbit.

> I could arrange for 50-100 100Mbit exit nodes running 24/7, with a
>traffic limit somewhere between 1 and 4 terabytes (will need to scrutinize
>my current contract and do some math). Arranging for such a number of
>"honestly unlimited traffic at 100Mbit speed" would be...significantly
>more problematic.

4TB/mo is good for a 10mbit connection, but not good for a 100mbit
connection. You'll end up either needing to hibernate for 80% of the
month, or rate limit your relays down a lot.

That said, we don't need 50-100 100mbit exit relays from any single
group. Just 5-10 would be nice. Maybe that makes the capacity issue
easier?

--Roger

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 07:34:14PM +0100, mick wrote:
> > We've lined up our first funder (BBG, aka http://www.voanews.com/),
> > and they're excited to have us start as soon as we can. They want to
> > sponsor 125+ fast exits.
> 
> Forgive me, but what do they want in return? ("He who pays the
> piper...")

Part of BBG's job is to make sure that everybody in the world can reach
their content for Voice of America, Persian News Network, etc. Certain
countries censor those websites, so they need tools like Tor that let
people reach their websites anyway.

The individuals we're working with at BBG are sympathetic to the
notion that security is an important component of circumvention:
https://svn.torproject.org/svn/projects/articles/circumvention-features.html
But when centralized-design tools like Ultrasurf put all their energy
into performance and little into security:
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/ultrasurf-definitive-review
this disparity in performance overshadows the disparity in security,
making it harder for them to justify recommending Tor. So they want to
make the Tor network more pleasant for their users.

So long as we don't lose track of the fact that anonymity loves company
(we need Tor to work well for all sorts of users in all sorts of
locations), it's a great match.

--Roger

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 12:01:13PM -0400, Steve Snyder wrote:
> >At the same time, much of our performance improvement comes from better
> >load balancing -- that is, concentrating traffic on the relays that can
> >handle it better. The result though is a direct tradeoff with relay
> >diversity: on today's network, clients choose one of the fastest 5 exit
> >relays around 25-30% of the time, and 80% of their choices come from a
> >pool of 40-50 relays.
> 
> From what I see on the TorStatus pages (torstatus.all.de, blutmagie.de)
>about a third of the roughly 3000 relays listed are at or below
>64KB/sec of demonstrated bandwidth.  No doubt some of these are
>soon-to-be-high-bandwidth servers that are just ramping up, and some
>are nodes having transitory networking problems.  It seems reasonable to
>assume, though, that most of these low-bandwidth nodes are intentionally
>low-bandwidth, perhaps on the basis of the Tor doc stating a 20KB/sec
>minimum.

Yep. Note that I raised the minimum to 30KB/s a year or so back:
https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay

Here are the current cutoffs for flags from moria1's perspective:

Jul 31 18:50:01.000 [info] Cutoffs: For Stable, 656736 sec uptime,
509452 sec MTBF. For Fast: 32768 bytes/sec. For Guard: WFU 94.512%,
time-known 691200 sec, and bandwidth 128000 or 133912 bytes/sec.

Meaning if you don't have 32KB/s advertised in your relay descriptor,
you won't get the Fast flag and most clients will ignore you.

> With "80% of their choices come from a pool of 40-50 relays" that leaves
>a 20% chance for the remaining 2950 nodes.  A case for low-bandwidth
>nodes can be made as a means to dissuade anticipated routing (due to pool
>size), but it seems from the stats quoted above that there is little
>chance that 2000+ of these 3000 nodes will ever carry Tor traffic,
>and thus can be ignored for purposes of traffic analysis.

You're using the wrong numbers (the 40-50 relays are just for the exit
position, and there are only ~920 relays with the Exit flag), but your
point is right.

Karsten made this graphic earlier to show that the top 50 exits account
for 78.9% of the exit weights:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/attachment/ticket/6443/exit-proportions.png

> Is there any justification for a low-bandwidth Tor node?

We could imagine alternate designs like Mashael's "multipath" design
that spreads Tor flows across multiple circuits:
http://www.cacr.math.uwaterloo.ca/techreports/2011/cacr2011-29.pdf

But currently, no, tiny nodes are not particularly helpful. There's an
open research question as to whether they even hurt. Or more specifically,
what the performance curve looks like if we dump the X% slowest relays:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1854

I had originally imagined doing network simulations with Shadow or
Experimentor to help answer #1854, but it's proving particularly tough
to get an accurate network model at that level:
https://shadow.cs.umn.edu/about/papers/tormodel-cset2012.pdf

>  And if so,
>what is the practical minimum bandwidth needed to actually see any
>traffic?

Actually, even these tiny relays see traffic. That's because of the sheer
number of Tor clients out there -- if enough clients make enough circuits,
some of them will be through the small relays. The question is whether
the bandwidth cap on them makes that circuit especially no fun to use,
relative to what you'd get if we squeezed all the users onto a smaller
number of higher-bandwidth relays. My guess is raising the min bw for the
Fast flag to 50KB or even 100KB would reduce the variance in torperf
performance:
https://metrics.torproject.org/performance.html?graph=torperf&source=moria&filesize=1mb#torperf

--Roger

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 06:32:30PM +0200, Julian Wissmann wrote:
> we've got an offer for 10GBit
>unmetered@750?, which is kind of sweet spot performance/buck wise and I
>guess, that it could handle 8-12 Tor nodes performance wise to satisfy
>the pipe. It would be a large number of high performance nodes run by just
>one operator, though, so I'm unsure if it really is that great idea :-(

I think 10gbit is too big for the current Tor network.

The total bandwidth of the network is something like 24gbit currently:
https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html#bandwidth
and it's more like 10gbit if you just count exits.

So it makes sense to get a bunch of 1gbit spots (to offset the couple
of 1gbit spots we have already), but I think 10gbit would make things
too uneven at this point.

--Roger

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 11:21:01AM +0100, mick wrote:
> Question for tor developers. How hard would it be to change the logic
> (and syntax) of exit policy in tor to allow domain based formulations
> like:
> 
> reject *.gmail.com
> reject *aol.com

Very hard.

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorFAQ#ExitpoliciesshouldbeabletoblockwebsitesnotjustIPaddresses

--Roger

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 07:31:42PM +, delber wrote:
> What we have found though, is that several smaller (not-for-profits or
> coops) ISPs would be happy to help the Tor network, provided there is a
> clear legal boundary. Something that our not-for-profit would create.
> The downside is that they are small, so the cost of their bandwidth is
> between a monthly 3??? and 10??? (when it is not even more) for each Mbps
> (95%ile). But they would stand in case of trouble. And some of them have
> an economic interest as using more bandwidth would lower their overall
> cost per Mbps.
> 
> One of them is willing to sponsor some of the bandwidth, and it looks
> like a good place to start an initial set of nodes. But even with their
> sponsoring, $100/month will not cover hosting+bandwidth expenses.
> 
> It might be something desirable though. If external funding does not
> cover all the costs, then we will have to campaign for other donations.
> A good habit, as it makes it more likely that at least some of the nodes
> would survive in case the external funding stops.

This sounds like a great idea. One of our goals here is to give other
organizations a chance to start up and be like torservers.net.

It is definitely a smart idea to get your community helping to cover
the costs. Having just one sponsor makes you very fragile.

It's also a smart idea to keep talking to ISPs, and find some that want
to sponsor some of the bandwidth as you describe above. They're out there
if you look hard enough! :)

Be sure to use the resources here (like Julian) for advice too.

--Roger

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 10:49:49AM -0400, Sam Whited wrote:
> Perhaps only registered companies should be sponsored ??? as much as I
> hate to limit the scope of the project, I think this (might) prevent
> abuse to a certain extent. Individuals who wanted to run an exit relay
> of their own could still do so, they would just have to use some of
> the money to form an LLC (or whatever their countries equivalent is if
> the scope of this project extends outside of the US).

I think encouraging people to create an organization around their exit(s)
is fine, but ultimately I'd prefer to leave it up to them how they want
to organize.

For example, there are several exits running in great hosting locations
based on handshake agreements with a friend at the ISP. That seems at
least as stable as somebody who sets up an LLC to pay some ISP whose
abuse department doesn't know or care about Tor. Ideally we'd have both.

> > I think we should aim to constrain ourselves to talking about >=100mbit
> > exits
> 
> I disagree; as others have said, lots of 10mbit relays will do as much
> for the network as a few 100mbit relays. Most peoples use case is
> simply checking email, browsing the web, reading news, etc. which
> don't necessarily need a huge 100mbit relay.

Remember that there are 50+ Tor clients running now, with only 3000
relays (and considering weights, it's way less than 3000). So while
10mbit should indeed be enough for most clients, if you try to squeeze
500 clients through a 10mbit connection, it works way way less well than
squeezing them through a 100mbit connection.

The "small pipe" issue is exacerbated by our end-to-end flow control
issues:
http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#pets2011-defenestrator
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4486

> Consider asking some of the faster / more stable non-exit relay
> operators as well. Many of these folks (myself included) have run an
> exit relay at one point or another and stopped???or want to run an exit
> but won't???because of the financial burden, or because of legal
> ramifications, etc.

Good idea. Once I catch up with all the private mails from exit relay
operators (yay), I'll send out another burst to the operators of large
non-exit relays.

--Roger

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 01:50:20PM -0700, Mike Perry wrote:
> > > > Hey all,
> > > > Have you contemplated sending this over to the hackerspaces list?
> > >
> > > There exists THE list for hackerspaces? Well hot damn. Are these them:
> > > http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/
> > >
> > In most countries there is a foundation covering multiple hackerspaces,
> > these are usually where you'd want to start. If you need some more contacts
> > in the Benelux and UK area, I can lend a hand.
> 
> Good suggestion. I do generally agree that hackerspaces are a great
> untapped potential for running more Tor nodes. It is definitely
> something that should be explored. Not sure who (if anyone) is tasked
> with driving this whole exit sponsoring initiative yet, though.
> 
> I also like the idea of favoring larger, better organized hackerspaces
> that are more likely to be able to continue to manage their exits over
> the long term.

I think getting hackerspaces involved is a great idea. If any of you
know any, or are involved in the broader hackerspace lists, please let
them know about this thread and help them get involved! The more the
merrier at this point.

(I think Andy's "you probably shouldn't run your exit relay on your
hackerspace's only network connection, in case your ISP unplugs it for
a while" point is a good one to keep in mind too.)

Thanks,
--Roger

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Tycho Andersen]

Hi Roger,

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 02:58:54PM -0400, Roger Dingledine wrote:
>
> Open questions we need to decide about:
> 
> 1) What exactly would we pay for?
> 
> I think the right way to do it is to offer to reimburse bandwidth/hosting
> costs -- I don't want to get into the business of paying people to
> run relays, and I don't want people to be trying to figure out how to
> "profit". That leads to all sorts of horrible incentive structures.

You might also consider matching operator investment in a relay
(similar to employer charity donation matching programs that exist in
the States). I would continue to be willing to contribute my own money
even with sponsor dollars, but with matching my relay would be able to
take more advantage of the economics of scale. In addition, if the
funding suddenly dries up, the exit node doesn't immediately die, it
just goes back to the original capacity I'm comfortable funding
myself.

\t
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Moritz Bartl]

On 31.07.2012 12:21, mick wrote:
> Question for tor developers. How hard would it be to change the logic
> (and syntax) of exit policy in tor to allow domain based formulations
> like:
> 
> reject *.gmail.com
> reject *aol.com

We see webmail based spam reports from all kinds of addresses. The
better approach is to use ISPs that don't get upset by such reports.

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[mick]

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 18:51:35 -0400
Steve Snyder  allegedly wrote:
 
> Allowing exits from ports 80 and 443 will always carry the risk of
> abuse complaints.
> 
> It would be better to retain 80 and 443 as exit ports and just block 
> traffic to the Google/Yahoo/AOL/etc. mail servers but I don't how
> that could be done with their respective load-balancing schemes.

IP address based policy is tricky to use when large systems can use
wide address ranges. And these addresses change over time.

Question for tor developers. How hard would it be to change the logic
(and syntax) of exit policy in tor to allow domain based formulations
like:

reject *.gmail.com
reject *aol.com

etc.

Mick 
-
blog: baldric.net
fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B  72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312

Note that I have recently upgraded my GPG key see:
http://baldric.net/2012/07/20/gpg-key-upgrade/
-



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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Steve Snyder]

On 07/30/2012 11:53 AM, Moritz Bartl wrote:

On 30.07.2012 13:27, Moritz Bartl wrote:

We have been kicked from FDC in the past


With only port 80, 443, 554, and 1755 open, this might be different and
worth a try. Same goes for the similar offer for shared 10 Gbps by Limehost.



It wouldn't be different.  FDC threatened to cancel my account after 
several complaints of spamming via webmail.  (I was using the Reduced 
Exit Policy found on Tor's website.)  They only backed down after I 
changed my exit node into a middle node.


Allowing exits from ports 80 and 443 will always carry the risk of abuse 
complaints.


It would be better to retain 80 and 443 as exit ports and just block 
traffic to the Google/Yahoo/AOL/etc. mail servers but I don't how that 
could be done with their respective load-balancing schemes.

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Moritz Bartl]

On 30.07.2012 13:27, Moritz Bartl wrote:
> We have been kicked from FDC in the past 

With only port 80, 443, 554, and 1755 open, this might be different and
worth a try. Same goes for the similar offer for shared 10 Gbps by Limehost.

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Moritz Bartl]

> True but then you are simply using empty capacity of the others which is not 
> guaranteed to you. So if the other customers start pumping your
> connection speed drops.

Not necessarily if we are on a dedicated Gbit port (which we are at
least at Axigy) and the ISP has enough upstream capacity. Limehost now
only offers "best effort" shared Gbit. Back when we ordered our server,
it clearly said dedicated Gbit.

Also, we don't really care as the deals have already paid out. We only
make monthly contracts so we can easily move in case something happens.
There's no reason to pay extra just because.

My strategy was to go through web hosting forums and pick out very cheap
ISPs. FDCservers for example claims to give away "enterprise 10Gbit,
dedicated port" for $599 at the moment. Who cares if it's "just" 2Gbps
in the end. It's still a great deal. We have been kicked from FDC in the
past and they don't have RIPE IPs so we're not going after that deal -
it might still be good for running some fast non-exit relays.

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Andreas Fink]

On 30.07.2012, at 13:03, Moritz Bartl  wrote:

> On 30.07.2012 12:57, Andreas Fink wrote:
>>> 109 Euro for Gbit in Romania (Voxility/Limehost)
>>> $400 each for Gbit in Budapest and USA (Axigy)*
>>> 300 Euro for 200 Mbps in Sweden
>>> 375 Euro for 200TB (~800 Mbps) in Netherlands (NForce)
>>> 
>> 
>> You have to well differentiate here if you get shared traffic or dedicated 
>> one.
> 
> I don't know how they do it, but we get 600-800 Mbps constantly since
> properly configuring the nodes at Limehost. Axigy provides dedicated
> Gbit at that price to us as sponsorship - same for NForce (actually
> their deal is 2x100TB outbound, inbound free).


Then they are giving away bandwidth below cost or you profit of the fact that 
most of their other customers are not doing anything.


> 
>> In othe rwords if you pay 109€ for 1GBit you are unlikely able  fill that 
>> gigabit 95% of the time. 
> 
> See http://voxility1.torservers.net/vnstat_d.png
> and http://voxility1.torservers.net/vnstat.png (pretty constant daily
> pattern)

> 
>> In international wholesale, prices per megabit range from 1€ - 50€ depending 
>> on location.
> 
> That's why we go with ISPs who do a mixed calculation. Say, one in ten
> customers uses the full Gbit.

True but then you are simply using empty capacity of the others which is not 
guaranteed to you. So if the other customers start pumping your connection 
speed drops.



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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Moritz Bartl]

On 30.07.2012 12:57, Andreas Fink wrote:
>> 109 Euro for Gbit in Romania (Voxility/Limehost)
>> $400 each for Gbit in Budapest and USA (Axigy)*
>> 300 Euro for 200 Mbps in Sweden
>> 375 Euro for 200TB (~800 Mbps) in Netherlands (NForce)
>>
> 
> You have to well differentiate here if you get shared traffic or dedicated 
> one.

I don't know how they do it, but we get 600-800 Mbps constantly since
properly configuring the nodes at Limehost. Axigy provides dedicated
Gbit at that price to us as sponsorship - same for NForce (actually
their deal is 2x100TB outbound, inbound free).

> In othe rwords if you pay 109€ for 1GBit you are unlikely able  fill that 
> gigabit 95% of the time. 

See http://voxility1.torservers.net/vnstat_d.png
and http://voxility1.torservers.net/vnstat.png (pretty constant daily
pattern)

> In international wholesale, prices per megabit range from 1€ - 50€ depending 
> on location.

That's why we go with ISPs who do a mixed calculation. Say, one in ten
customers uses the full Gbit.

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Andreas Fink]

On 30.07.2012, at 12:54, Moritz Bartl  wrote:

> On 24.07.2012 00:09, Roger Dingledine wrote:
>> - What do you currently pay for hosting/bandwidth, and how much bandwidth
>> do you get for that?
> 
> 109 Euro for Gbit in Romania (Voxility/Limehost)
> $400 each for Gbit in Budapest and USA (Axigy)*
> 300 Euro for 200 Mbps in Sweden
> 375 Euro for 200TB (~800 Mbps) in Netherlands (NForce)
> 

You have to well differentiate here if you get shared traffic or dedicated one. 
In othe rwords if you pay 109€ for 1GBit you are unlikely able  fill that 
gigabit 95% of the time. And the forth offer is for transferred traffic not 
speed.

In international wholesale, prices per megabit range from 1€ - 50€ depending on 
location. Those are dedicated backbone prices so for a fully dedicated 1Gbps, 
you should expect a minimum of 1000€. Otherwise you simply get overbooked 
connectivity



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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Moritz Bartl]

On 24.07.2012 00:09, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> - What do you currently pay for hosting/bandwidth, and how much bandwidth
> do you get for that?

109 Euro for Gbit in Romania (Voxility/Limehost)
$400 each for Gbit in Budapest and USA (Axigy)*
300 Euro for 200 Mbps in Sweden
375 Euro for 200TB (~800 Mbps) in Netherlands (NForce)

*) currently down, should be back up within the next two months

 > - Is it a stable hosting situation? For example, how do they handle
> abuse complaints so far?

All good.

> - Is your hosting situation one where it could make sense for us to
> reimburse your bandwidth costs? (Some people have a deal through their
> employer, friend, etc where they don't pay for hosting.)

Totally.

> - Are you in a position to get more bandwidth if you pay more? At what
> rates? We're most interested in sponsoring >=100mbit relays.

Yes, at likely the same rates.

> - Do you have other locations in mind where you would run another exit
> relay if you didn't have to pay for it?

At the moment: No.

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Webmaster]

If I may be allowed to add my 2cents as a newbie...

Just found the website https://torstatus.blutmagie.de  Linked off the 
https://www.torservers.net site.  If this is reliable, then stats would 
be easy to determine.List the say...top 5(random number) of each 
country and support them?  If a particular country does not have the min 
5 then run a contest... As other exit nodes reach a milestone in 
say...uptime + Bandwidth + Location , they are added to the support 
list.  This gives a goal for node operators to reach, and tells you they 
are good system admins and should be taken care of.


A secondary with the "top 5 idea"  After the "top 5" are taken care of, 
if there is money left over,  a voting system could be put into place 
where the community could vote on which node to donate to OR the ability 
to earmark their donations to particular nodes.


On 07/29/2012 09:25 PM, Zac Lym wrote:
This seems (to me) like an obvious suggestion, so my apologies if it's 
already been thought up.


Why not establish a team/scoreboard system, like those used for 
distributed computing and BitCoin mining?  This elegantly solves a few 
problems while with minimal resource commitment from the Tor 
organization.Most importantly, it's a way to pump money into the 
system without ruining the current atmosphere.   Sponsors could easily 
buy some bandwidth or people can also just donate their own 
connections and join a particular team.  The scoreboard is based on 
goodwill, not dollars spent.It also eliminates the hassle of setting 
prices, as teams can compete for dollars and bandwidth provided, 
essentially setting their own prices.  The org could also setup a 
payment system, like we-pay, that the team admins can configure to 
deposit funds.  It could be set as a proof of work system, paying 
after the bandwidth has been provided.


This also allows a degree of control to prevent abuse from admins 
trying to juice stats by abusing some network infrastructure, like 
dummy trial accounts on hosting sites.  A group admin could block 
specific hosts or the Tor project could remove an entire group.


Finally, this could allow for the Tor project to create metrics based 
on things other than speed, akin to how Folding@home scores GPU and 
CPU contributions differently.  Then the project can set anonymity 
goals for the network (such as location, ISP, backbone provider, etc) 
and the volunteers will adjust their patterns accordingly.


Finally, I would like to strongly suggest taking a cut of all 
donations to pay for the new infrastructure and Tor research and 
development.  I wouldn't want development to slow on Tor because 
donations are going to bandwidth instead. Indeed, I would prefer we 
spend a ton of money on the stenography efforts and usability.


Anyway, thanks for the hard work!
-Zach Lym



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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Zac Lym]

This seems (to me) like an obvious suggestion, so my apologies if it's
already been thought up.

Why not establish a team/scoreboard system, like those used for distributed
computing and BitCoin mining?  This elegantly solves a few problems while
with minimal resource commitment from the Tor organization.

Most importantly, it's a way to pump money into the system without ruining
the current atmosphere.   Sponsors could easily buy some bandwidth or
people can also just donate their own connections and join a particular
team.  The scoreboard is based on goodwill, not dollars spent.

It also eliminates the hassle of setting prices, as teams can compete for
dollars and bandwidth provided, essentially setting their own prices.  The
org could also setup a payment system, like we-pay, that the team admins
can configure to deposit funds.  It could be set as a proof of work system,
paying after the bandwidth has been provided.

This also allows a degree of control to prevent abuse from admins trying to
juice stats by abusing some network infrastructure, like dummy trial
accounts on hosting sites.  A group admin could block specific hosts or the
Tor project could remove an entire group.

Finally, this could allow for the Tor project to create metrics based on
things other than speed, akin to how Folding@home scores GPU and CPU
contributions differently.  Then the project can set anonymity goals for
the network (such as location, ISP, backbone provider, etc) and the
volunteers will adjust their patterns accordingly.

Finally, I would like to strongly suggest taking a cut of all donations to
pay for the new infrastructure and Tor research and development.  I
wouldn't want development to slow on Tor because donations are going to
bandwidth instead. Indeed, I would prefer we spend a ton of money on the
stenography efforts and usability.

Anyway, thanks for the hard work!
-Zach Lym
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Andrew Beveridge]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 9:22 PM, Roger Dingledine  wrote:

> Hello Andrew,
>
> I wanted to draw your attention to a thread I've started on the tor-relays
> list:
> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-July/001433.html
>
>
Hi Roger,

I'm not too familiar with mailing lists, so hopefully I'm not top posting
or replying in the wrong place here. I'm simply replying to your email in
Gmail with a CC to the tor-relays list. Sorry for the late reply, I've been
away with no internet access for the past week.


> In short, we have a funder who wants to sponsor more and faster Tor
> exits, and we're brainstorming about how to use the money in a way that
> makes the network stronger but also doesn't screw up the "community"
> side of the Tor relay operator community. The first step is collecting
> facts about the current fast Tor exit relays.
>
>
Great! I've not been vocal in the Tor community before now, but I'd like to
start, and I'm certainly happy to share my experience / thoughts.


> - What do you currently pay for hosting/bandwidth, and how much bandwidth
> do you get for that?
>

This is a complicated question, because I run a single Tor exit in a VPS on
my company dedicated server. I run a local company doing computer repair
and web development, and lease a single dedicated server from OVH (more
specifically, Kimsufi) for a total of £64 a month (inc. VAT). That gets me
the Kimsufi 16G dedicated server, a RIPE block of 4 extra IPs, and an
external 2TB HDD. 100Mbit pipe, 10TB/month bandwidth. £0.87/TB if I go over
that, so if I were to max out the bandwidth for an entire month, using
around 30TB traffic, I would have to pay about £18 on top for the extra
bandwidth. However, according to the OVH manager I never seem to go
anywhere near the traffic limit, despite having had the exit set to use
50Mbit/s constantly for the past 3 months.

As far as I'm concerned, it costs me nothing to run this exit node - my
company needs the dedicated server regardless, and none of the ~50 websites
I host use enough traffic to be affected by the fact that my server is
using half it's available bandwidth for Tor.
In an ideal world, I would rent a second Kimsufi server just for Tor
purposes, which would cost £36/month (Kimsufi 16G) + £4/month (RIPE block).

Therefore, if I were to participate in this experiment, I would say *£40
GBP / month* would get *10TB of 100 Mbit/s* exit traffic.
Additional *20TB* traffic could be purchased for *£18 / month*, which would
bring the maximum cost to *$92 USD / month.*


> - Is it a stable hosting situation? For example, how do they handle
> abuse complaints so far?
>

This is an important one, because OVH are not Tor-friendly. In fact, they
aren't very friendly in general! Several people told me it was very foolish
to run an exit node on an OVH server, since as soon as OVH get even a whiff
of a complaint, they are quick to suspend.
All my company-hosted websites are hosted on a second redundant server with
another ISP so I'm not worried if OVH do find out and take that route and
cut me off. I'm also not worried about legal issues, as I have positioned
myself as a web-hosting customer of my own PLC, with terms and conditions
absolving my PLC of any legal risks. In the off chance some legal authority
were to come to my flat in britain, they would find no electrical equipment
to seize as I own only a single laptop and it usually lives in my car or
partners house anyway!

As I have only been running this exit for 3 months, I am far from an
authoritative voice on the issue of abuse complaints, but the most
important thing is definitely SWIP as far as I can see it - the IP address
I use for the exit is one from the RIPE block I lease and as such the abuse
email is my own.
I've had about 20 abuse report emails so far, all automated (by the looks
of things) from some system within the brazilian government, following an
Sqlmap SQL injection scan/attack on a few government sites. I replied to
the first one with the standard template, got no reply, haven't worried
about it since.

I reckon if OVH found out I was running an exit they would be likely to cut
me off fairly swiftly, but they don't seem to pay much attention to Kimsufi
customers since it is their budget range with very slow (week+ per ticket)
support and presumably low margins. I think that and me as the primary
abuse contact for the IP mean it's likely to stay up for a while. If I do
get any hassle, I'll defend it as far as I can from a business perspective,
but if they don't give in I'll likely just cancel it and open a new Kimsufi
lease - I very much doubt anyone is checking new invoices for similar
details to past customers.


> - Is your hosting situation one where it could make sense for us to
> reimburse your bandwidth costs? (Some people have a deal through their
> employer, friend, etc where they don't pay for hosting.)
>

I don't think so - as explained above, at present I don't pay a penny, but
I can only offer about

Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[grarpamp]

>> 4) What exactly do we mean by diversity?
>
> I would look at this almost entirely from a jurisdictional and ISP level.  I
> believe the biggest "sudden impact" threats to the tor network are going to
> be from legal changes (jurisdictional, i.e. "save the children, nullroute
> the nodes") and local business policy changes ("sorry tor customers, no more
> tor egress from our DC due to complaints").

I'm not sure which thread I mentioned this on so I'll put it here to be sure.
I think one main thing needed is a project to catalog all the current
exits as to their diversity...
Box: ISP/hoster, AS, datacenter, country, upstream AS/Tier-n path,
relay-operator
Relay-operator: country

Without that, seems like placing nodes amounts to, 'Well,
we don't have any in Iran, let's go there'. If it turns out that
IP is more or less fed as a courtesy from UAE across the
gulf, there's not much gain. Repeat analysis for any of the
above parameters.

More nodes are probably good, just not all as USA, Equinix,
Level3, with whatever hoster has a rack in all the DC's.
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Andy Isaacson]

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 02:36:32AM +, k...@damnfbi.tk wrote:
> Hey all,
> Has anyone contemplated pitching this towards hackerspaces running
> their own fast nodes?

I wouldn't recommend running an exit node on a network link that will
make you sad if it goes away for a few days.  Most hackerspaces would be
very sad without Internet, and "shut off the account" is a common ISP
response to even fairly small amounts of abuse traffic.

> While most have a decent connection to support their space and users
> I'm sure it would pair well and also allow them to supplement their
> meager income.

I didn't get the impression from Roger's email that "profit" is part of
the equation.  The purpose of the proposed funding is to defray costs;
most hackerspaces that run exit nodes run them at break-even with
donations, not even counting the value of the volunteer time needed to
run the node.  That would probably continue with the proposed funding.

-andy
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Josh]

Excuse me, as I'm rather new to mailing lists an the sort, but I've been 
tailing the conversation on and off the last few days.


I'm currently using Secured Servers through PheonixNAP as my dedicated 
provider. I've used them for roughly a year now and have had no real 
problems. They are located in Pheonix, Arizona.


Bandwidth through them is relatively cheap. I'm paying $25/month for a 
1Gbps line with 15TB of bandwidth. $10 for the 1Gbps line itself, then 
$1/TB of bandwidth I need per month. The overall cost of my server is 
around $170/month. It is a quad core Xeon E3-1270 with 16GB of RAM and a 
2TB hard disk. It's obviously not just for a Tor relay, but it is more 
than powerful enough to run one.


I had contacted one of my techs twice in the past and asked for 
confirmation that they would not have any problems with me running a Tor 
exit node on my server. I explained what Tor was, and explained what 
running an exit node would likely entail. They stated that they would 
not have a problem with it unless it caused a large amount of abuse 
reports in a short time span, and if it did, they would simply ask me to 
take it offline or take steps to reduce the rate of abuse reports, but 
he said it would likely not be a problem as long as I was not hosting 
anything illegal myself.


I have not talked to them regarding a SWIP on my IP range, but they seem 
like they might be willing to at least negotiate. They had no problems 
setting me up with Microsoft's JMRP (Junk Mail Reporting Program), which 
forwards all Hotmail/MSN abuse complaints to me personally.


Regardless, they're one of the most affordable dedicated hosting 
providers I've used, and I'm quite happy with their service. They may be 
a viable option for running TOR Relays, but I cannot 100% guarantee they 
will have no problems with it. It may be worth calling or e-mailing them 
yourselves to inquire further.


(If you don't mind me sending my affiliate link and using it if you 
decide to purchase from them, it would be greatly appreciated,)

http://www.securedservers.com/396.html

Regular links to SecuredServers/PheonixNAP,
http://www.securedservers.com/ 
http://www.phoenixnap.com/

On 07/26/2012 08:23 PM, Name Withheld wrote:


1) What exactly would we pay for?


Agree on 100+ mbps exit node funding.  Also agree with Moritz's 
suggestion that there be a form that limits fund disbursement on a 
per-ISP level, to encourage ISP diversity (and contribute to the 
discovery of new "known good" ISPs for tor).


*Continued* funding should be contingent on *simple* review 
requirements (e.g. node must be up and passing decent traffic during 
period, fund recipient must document experience with ISP on GoodBadISP 
wiki page, etc) without making it a paperwork nightmare.


2) Should we fund existing relays or new ones?


Difficult question.  Would say allow both, with the agreement that 
anyone those running existing relays agree to improve service in some 
way (increase monthly b/w cap, set up an additional node [even if it's 
a small vps that doesn't require the amount of money funded], etc).  
This would allow our big important providers to offset some of their 
existing costs while still expanding the network (even if it's in 
nominal terms in limited circumstances).


If there's suspected abuse, run a annual/semiannual funding review, 
but I imagine those gaming the system are more likely to be small 
players than the larger, established providers who were running nodes 
without any help.



4) What exactly do we mean by diversity?


I would look at this almost entirely from a jurisdictional and ISP 
level.  I believe the biggest "sudden impact" threats to the tor 
network are going to be from legal changes (jurisdictional, i.e. "save 
the children, nullroute the nodes") and local business policy changes 
("sorry tor customers, no more tor egress from our DC due to 
complaints").


Other threats are more likely to occur slowly, requiring less focus on 
pre-planning.


5) How much "should" an exit relay cost?


$150/mo minimum.  I pay roughly $130/mo with limehost/voxility, and 
they're almost the cheapest physical servers & bandwidth to be had on 
the internet.  Western Europe, US, & Asian locations are going to be 
more expensive for a quality provider.  Perhaps offer different 
funding amounts based on the ISP's region?


Also, review funding minimums and maximums every 3-6 months -- I think 
that as VPS providers become more competitive and reliable for tor 
purposes (i.e. losing the metering), this is going to could change 
very favorably.


6) How exactly should we choose which exit relay operators to
reimburse?


I think history is a good metric for determining how successfully an 
operator will be in setting up a new node.  If you get money to one of 
a the major operators on the condition of setting up a new node, I 
don't think they will have trouble setting up a new 

Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Name Withheld]

> 1) What exactly would we pay for?
>
>
Agree on 100+ mbps exit node funding.  Also agree with Moritz's suggestion
that there be a form that limits fund disbursement on a per-ISP level, to
encourage ISP diversity (and contribute to the discovery of new "known
good" ISPs for tor).

*Continued* funding should be contingent on *simple* review requirements
(e.g. node must be up and passing decent traffic during period, fund
recipient must document experience with ISP on GoodBadISP wiki page, etc)
without making it a paperwork nightmare.



> 2) Should we fund existing relays or new ones?
>
>
Difficult question.  Would say allow both, with the agreement that anyone
those running existing relays agree to improve service in some way
(increase monthly b/w cap, set up an additional node [even if it's a small
vps that doesn't require the amount of money funded], etc).  This would
allow our big important providers to offset some of their existing costs
while still expanding the network (even if it's in nominal terms in limited
circumstances).

If there's suspected abuse, run a annual/semiannual funding review, but I
imagine those gaming the system are more likely to be small players than
the larger, established providers who were running nodes without any help.


>
> 4) What exactly do we mean by diversity?
>
>
I would look at this almost entirely from a jurisdictional and ISP level.
I believe the biggest "sudden impact" threats to the tor network are going
to be from legal changes (jurisdictional, i.e. "save the children,
nullroute the nodes") and local business policy changes ("sorry tor
customers, no more tor egress from our DC due to complaints").

Other threats are more likely to occur slowly, requiring less focus on
pre-planning.



> 5) How much "should" an exit relay cost?
>
>
$150/mo minimum.  I pay roughly $130/mo with limehost/voxility, and they're
almost the cheapest physical servers & bandwidth to be had on the
internet.  Western Europe, US, & Asian locations are going to be more
expensive for a quality provider.  Perhaps offer different funding amounts
based on the ISP's region?

Also, review funding minimums and maximums every 3-6 months -- I think that
as VPS providers become more competitive and reliable for tor purposes
(i.e. losing the metering), this is going to could change very favorably.



> 6) How exactly should we choose which exit relay operators to reimburse?
>
>
I think history is a good metric for determining how successfully an
operator will be in setting up a new node.  If you get money to one of a
the major operators on the condition of setting up a new node, I don't
think they will have trouble setting up a new node.  If you give it to new
guy, you had better have strong a strong indication that they have the
skills necessary to handle becoming an overnight systems administrator.



> 7) How do we audit / track the sponsored relays?
>
>
Are there any known weaknesses with just checking the stats pages?  Require
those selected for funds to register their node nicknames, then check to
see if they're online (and passing a reasonable amount of traffic) couple
time a month (or week, or day... whatever).



> 8) Legal questions?
>
>
Really should ask friendly lawyer blogs about this one.  Given the million
different jurisdictions involved with tor, there's probably no safe answer,
but I would suggest phrasing everything as a "reimbursement" or "award"
rather than a payment to try and limit any perception that this is a
commercial activity.  State in the agreement that the funds are not to be
used for commercial purposes, or something similar, and that they do not
constitute a commercial relationship between funder and fundee.
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Jacob Appelbaum]

Andreas Fink:
> On 26.07.2012, at 19:52, Andrew Lewman  wrote:
> 
>> On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:05:53 +
>> k...@damnfbi.tk wrote:
>>> We should probably talk further then since I'm _in_ Iceland atm and 
>>> would also like to see a high capacity node here.
>>> May I ask for your reasoning though? A lot of people on both sides of 
>>> the pond have believed that IMMI  
>>> has been passed here already when it has in fact not (yet). I'm in
>>> touch with those trying to pass it and it comes up for major review
>>> in september. Have you tried talking to DataCell 
>>> ? 
>>
>> I talked to Datacell roughly a year ago. They were fine with an exit
>> relay, but at the time were distracted by suing Visa. 
>>
>> The only issue was pure cost. Traffic leaving Iceland costs a lot. I
>> wasn't prepared to spend ISK300,000 per month for a 100 mbps exit relay.
>>
>> Maybe times have changed and traffic from Iceland is not so expensive
>> anymore.
> 
> Traffic from Iceland is still relatively expensive. However we could host 
> some machines in other places where we interconnect on internet exchanges. We 
> are still distracted by suing Visa due to Wikileaks case but that doesn't 
> stop us doing good business.
> 
> I believe we have a couple of users running tor on their VM's. Not sure if 
> exit or not. But the first law enforcement request (identify the owner) was 
> already in (however not in proper format and from the wrong country so we 
> didn't have to answer it anyway. They couldn't even read whois entries 
> correctly or use traceroute to get an idea where the server really is). 
> 

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for continuing to sue Visa and thanks for your support of well,
everything you seem to support.

If we wanted to collectively pool some cash and pay for 100Mb or 1Gb of
bandwidth on a rented machine, specifically as a Tor exit - what would
you want to see from the Tor community in terms of a monthly payment?

All the best,
Jacob
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Andrew Lewman]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:08:05 +0200
Andreas Fink  wrote:
> Traffic from Iceland is still relatively expensive. However we could
> host some machines in other places where we interconnect on internet
> exchanges. 

Is this true for IPv6 too?  I've found asking for IPv6-only servers is
almost free, because ISPs are trying to justify their investment of
IPv6-capable equipment. And having a customer run IPv6 without needing
IPv4 address space is a unicorn.

-- 
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pgp 0x6B4D6475
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Andreas Fink]

On 26.07.2012, at 19:52, Andrew Lewman  wrote:

> On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:05:53 +
> k...@damnfbi.tk wrote:
>> We should probably talk further then since I'm _in_ Iceland atm and 
>> would also like to see a high capacity node here.
>> May I ask for your reasoning though? A lot of people on both sides of 
>> the pond have believed that IMMI  
>> has been passed here already when it has in fact not (yet). I'm in
>> touch with those trying to pass it and it comes up for major review
>> in september. Have you tried talking to DataCell 
>> ? 
> 
> I talked to Datacell roughly a year ago. They were fine with an exit
> relay, but at the time were distracted by suing Visa. 
> 
> The only issue was pure cost. Traffic leaving Iceland costs a lot. I
> wasn't prepared to spend ISK300,000 per month for a 100 mbps exit relay.
> 
> Maybe times have changed and traffic from Iceland is not so expensive
> anymore.

Traffic from Iceland is still relatively expensive. However we could host some 
machines in other places where we interconnect on internet exchanges. We are 
still distracted by suing Visa due to Wikileaks case but that doesn't stop us 
doing good business.

I believe we have a couple of users running tor on their VM's. Not sure if exit 
or not. But the first law enforcement request (identify the owner) was already 
in (however not in proper format and from the wrong country so we didn't have 
to answer it anyway. They couldn't even read whois entries correctly or use 
traceroute to get an idea where the server really is). 


Andreas Fink
CEO DataCell ehf

> -- 
> Andrew
> http://tpo.is/contact
> pgp 0x6B4D6475
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[mick]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:58:54 -0400
Roger Dingledine  allegedly wrote:

> The result though is a direct tradeoff
> with relay diversity: on today's network, clients choose one of the
> fastest 5 exit relays around 25-30% of the time, and 80% of their
> choices come from a pool of 40-50 relays.
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6443

That cannot be good for the health of the network. It reduces the
size and complexity of the attackers target. 

> Since extra capacity is clearly good for performance, and since we're
> not doing particularly well at diversity with the current approach,
> we're going to try an experiment: we'll connect funding to exit relay
> operators so they can run bigger and/or better exit relays.
> 
> If we do it right (make more faster exit relays that aren't the
> current biggest ones, so there are more to choose from), we will
> improve the network's diversity as well as being able to handle more
> users.

Improving diversity (rather than outright speed) is, in my view, a
greater priority given your point above. 

> We've lined up our first funder (BBG, aka http://www.voanews.com/),
> and they're excited to have us start as soon as we can. They want to
> sponsor 125+ fast exits.

Forgive me, but what do they want in return? ("He who pays the
piper...")

I'm ambivalent about the idea of funding. Whilst I can see that it
might help the Tor network to grow, I see downstream problems if
funding dries up (or is "threatened" to be withdrawn). Whilst
volunteer funding (and resourcing) can probably never provide the size
and speed of network we would all like to see, it has the advantage
of freedom from a lot of potential constraints. Being a Brit, I also
prefer the model of "unpaid blood donation" to the commercial
model used in some countries. (It just makes you feel good) 

> More generally, we need to consider sustainability. Our current exit
> relay funding is for a period of 12 months, and while there's reason
> to think we will find continued support, the Tor network must not end
> up addicted to external funding. So long as everybody is running an
> exit relay because they want to save the world, I think we should be
> fine.

I agree 100%
 
Mick


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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[mick]

On Tue, 24 Jul 2012 07:05:41 -0400
Mike  allegedly wrote:

> in closing, don't discredit the cheaper solutions. They do work just
> fine and you don't need a pocket of money to throw at something.
> Telling the provider what you plan on doing and educating them works
> wonders as well. It has for me at least.
> 

Seconded.


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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Andrew Lewman]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:05:53 +
k...@damnfbi.tk wrote:
> We should probably talk further then since I'm _in_ Iceland atm and 
> would also like to see a high capacity node here.
> May I ask for your reasoning though? A lot of people on both sides of 
> the pond have believed that IMMI  
> has been passed here already when it has in fact not (yet). I'm in
> touch with those trying to pass it and it comes up for major review
> in september. Have you tried talking to DataCell 
> ? 

I talked to Datacell roughly a year ago. They were fine with an exit
relay, but at the time were distracted by suing Visa. 

The only issue was pure cost. Traffic leaving Iceland costs a lot. I
wasn't prepared to spend ISK300,000 per month for a 100 mbps exit relay.

Maybe times have changed and traffic from Iceland is not so expensive
anymore.

-- 
Andrew
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pgp 0x6B4D6475
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Sebastian G.]

Roger Dingledine:
> - Should we prefer big collectives like torservers, noisetor, CCC,
> dfri.se, and riseup (which can get great bulk rates on bandwidth and are
> big enough to have relationships with local lawyers and ISPs), or should
> we prefer individuals since they maximize our operator diversity? I think
> "explore both approaches" is a fine first plan.

You should explore both approaches, but expect that individuals that
haven't run an exit before - but are willing to do so - could require
more support.

I could imagine that interested people would be concerned about abuse
complaints. Finding an reasonable ISP is another problem. I'm quite
confident that the Tor community would assist, but don't know how it
could be organized.

> - Does the overall Tor network change legal categories in some
> country,
> e.g. becoming a telecommunications service when it wasn't before?

I wonder what would happen when Tor had "official abuse devisions",
where some people care about the abuse complaints the Tor network
"produces". Compared to "TelcoUK" and "TelcoUS" where each "Telco"
reacts to abuse complaints. Could that make Tor a telecommunications
service?


Everything else has mostly said, I guess.

Regards,
Sebastian
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Moritz Bartl]

On 26.07.2012 18:05, k...@damnfbi.tk wrote:
> Hi Moritz,
> We should probably talk further then since I'm _in_ Iceland atm and
> would also like to see a high capacity node here.
> May I ask for your reasoning though? 

Country/legal diversity.

> Have you tried talking to DataCell?

No, I have not yet.

Contrary to what has been posted on the list: Yes, we could afford
higher priced bandwidth than the average person, but we don't want to:
We are still committed to using donations for cheap bandwidth. Without
an additional "dedicated" Iceland sponsor, I don't feel I should touch
our current money for that.

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[mick]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2012 12:01:13 -0400 (EDT)
"Steve Snyder"  allegedly wrote:

> Is there any justification for a low-bandwidth Tor node?  And if so,
> what is the practical minimum bandwidth needed to actually see any
> traffic?

Yes. I run one. And have run two (or three at one time). I currently
run one on a rented VPS which shovels around 700-750 Meg per month.
The fastest I have run only gave 1Gig of traffic per month. I currently
don't allow exit (but have in the past) following a series of hassles
from my (otherwise quite accomodating) ISP who was getting flak about
abuse.

I guess I am typical of the low usage "domestic" type user who got fed
up with the impact on his ADSL line of running Tor locally so moved it
to a cheap VPS. I tunnel out to that VPS over SSH when I use Tor and
find that a much better way of accessing the network.

I choose to fund a Tor node because I am a Tor user and I believe in
giving something back to the Tor community by way of thanks. I do not
want, nor do I need, funding for that. 

Mick 

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[kupo]

Hi Moritz,
We should probably talk further then since I'm _in_ Iceland atm and 
would also like to see a high capacity node here.
May I ask for your reasoning though? A lot of people on both sides of 
the pond have believed that IMMI  
has been passed here already when it has in fact not (yet). I'm in touch 
with those trying to pass it and it comes up for major review in 
september. Have you tried talking to DataCell 
? They would be much more open to running an 
Exit node and if you talked to them personally might be able to offer 
some discounted rate here.

-kupo

On 07/26/2012 02:14 PM, Moritz Bartl wrote:

Hi,

What can I say that hasn't been said by others before... :)

We are in contact with reliable ISPs with endpoints in various
countries. They would be willing to cooperate on exits at these
locations. We have not yet talked about prices.

I would say we (as in Torservers.net) are in the position to run
multiple Gbit/s servers for prices at below $1/Mbit at "not your typical
ISP". In theory, we would be able to fulfill the 12.5 Gbit/s alone.
We're about to test a 10Gbit uplink with a Xeon behind it to find out
how far we can push a single server.

That said, we should discuss and come up with a good organizational
structure to reimburse people. Personally, I would only sponsor 100
Mbit/s or more (or maybe even only Gbit). I would set up a template that
asks for ISP information, so we can reject too many exits at one place
(say, a maximum of 1 Gbit/s or even one server per datacenter?).

Do you plan on reimbursing up front for a longer period, or only after?
We would likely need the money up front at least on a monthly basis.

Another option we have that might be more convenient is to decide on the
twelve/thirteen server locations up front and then ask the community to
fill the slots.

Given that there are places where you get Gbit for around or less than
$500, we could use the "extra money" to fund some slower locations. I
would very much like to see a high-bandwidth Iceland exit. The last
quote I got was 500 Euro for 200 Mbit/s (including hardware) at
Advania/ThorDC.



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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Steve Snyder]

Roger Dingledine arma at mit.edu
Mon Jul 23 18:58:54 UTC 2012
[snip]
>At the same time, much of our performance improvement comes from better
>load balancing -- that is, concentrating traffic on the relays that can
>handle it better. The result though is a direct tradeoff with relay
>diversity: on today's network, clients choose one of the fastest 5 exit
>relays around 25-30% of the time, and 80% of their choices come from a
>pool of 40-50 relays.
[snip]

>From what I see on the TorStatus pages (torstatus.all.de, blutmagie.de) about 
>a third of the roughly 3000 relays listed are at or below 64KB/sec of 
>demonstrated bandwidth.  No doubt some of these are soon-to-be-high-bandwidth 
>servers that are just ramping up, and some are nodes having transitory 
>networking problems.  It seems reasonable to assume, though, that most of 
>these low-bandwidth nodes are intentionally low-bandwidth, perhaps on the 
>basis of the Tor doc stating a 20KB/sec minimum.

With "80% of their choices come from a pool of 40-50 relays" that leaves a 20% 
chance for the remaining 2950 nodes.  A case for low-bandwidth nodes can be 
made as a means to dissuade anticipated routing (due to pool size), but it 
seems from the stats quoted above that there is little chance that 2000+ of 
these 3000 nodes will ever carry Tor traffic, and thus can be ignored for 
purposes of traffic analysis.

Is there any justification for a low-bandwidth Tor node?  And if so, what is 
the practical minimum bandwidth needed to actually see any traffic?


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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Moritz Bartl]

On 26.07.2012 16:14, Moritz Bartl wrote:
> That said, we should discuss and come up with a good organizational
> structure to reimburse people. Personally, I would only sponsor 100
> Mbit/s or more (or maybe even only Gbit). 

To make this more explicit: I opt to have 13 organizations/people
running 1 Gbit/s each. If an organization already runs 1 Gbit/s or more
from other funding (like CCC and Torservers), they are not eligible for
receiving a node stipend.

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Moritz Bartl]

Hi,

What can I say that hasn't been said by others before... :)

We are in contact with reliable ISPs with endpoints in various
countries. They would be willing to cooperate on exits at these
locations. We have not yet talked about prices.

I would say we (as in Torservers.net) are in the position to run
multiple Gbit/s servers for prices at below $1/Mbit at "not your typical
ISP". In theory, we would be able to fulfill the 12.5 Gbit/s alone.
We're about to test a 10Gbit uplink with a Xeon behind it to find out
how far we can push a single server.

That said, we should discuss and come up with a good organizational
structure to reimburse people. Personally, I would only sponsor 100
Mbit/s or more (or maybe even only Gbit). I would set up a template that
asks for ISP information, so we can reject too many exits at one place
(say, a maximum of 1 Gbit/s or even one server per datacenter?).

Do you plan on reimbursing up front for a longer period, or only after?
We would likely need the money up front at least on a monthly basis.

Another option we have that might be more convenient is to decide on the
twelve/thirteen server locations up front and then ask the community to
fill the slots.

Given that there are places where you get Gbit for around or less than
$500, we could use the "extra money" to fund some slower locations. I
would very much like to see a high-bandwidth Iceland exit. The last
quote I got was 500 Euro for 200 Mbit/s (including hardware) at
Advania/ThorDC.

-- 
Moritz Bartl
https://www.torservers.net/
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[kupo]

Just throwing my 2 cents in, we're running loki 
 
on a decade old dell pe1950 p3 (32bit) w/ 2GB of ram. We average about 
5.2 Mbps of traffic. That said I'm looking forward to seeing what 
increases a 64 cpu would bring.

-kupo


On 07/26/2012 07:28 AM, Andy Isaacson wrote:

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 11:48:16PM -0700, Sriakhil Gogineni wrote:

Ball park quotes we got were 99$ / 100 Mbps or $599 / 1000 Mbps for transit
for a single 1U... we'll see if we can get something better...

That's a good quote for 1Gbps.


Would this be helpful / viable option for a Tor exit node ?

Yes.


I also had just one question: what are the specs required for a Tor node?
It does not seem too resource intensive but I have not been able to find
any minimum system requirements. Would a current / last-generation quad
core with 8GB + would suffice?

A quad-core Xeon X3350 at 2.66 GHz can easily push 500 Mbps of Tor
throughput (500 Mbps up, 500 Mbps down).  CPU is a fairly limiting
factor.  Having AES-NI is a benefit.  8GB RAM is reasonable; there's no
reason to have more, but less is a tight squeeze.

-andy
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Andy Isaacson]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 11:48:16PM -0700, Sriakhil Gogineni wrote:
> Ball park quotes we got were 99$ / 100 Mbps or $599 / 1000 Mbps for transit
> for a single 1U... we'll see if we can get something better...

That's a good quote for 1Gbps.

> Would this be helpful / viable option for a Tor exit node ?

Yes.

> I also had just one question: what are the specs required for a Tor node?
> It does not seem too resource intensive but I have not been able to find
> any minimum system requirements. Would a current / last-generation quad
> core with 8GB + would suffice?

A quad-core Xeon X3350 at 2.66 GHz can easily push 500 Mbps of Tor
throughput (500 Mbps up, 500 Mbps down).  CPU is a fairly limiting
factor.  Having AES-NI is a benefit.  8GB RAM is reasonable; there's no
reason to have more, but less is a tight squeeze.

-andy
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Sam Whited]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA512

On 07/25/2012 12:34 PM, Julian Wissmann wrote:
> Please don't forget non profits, like 501(c)3, under which
> probably many hackerspaces in the US fall or the german e.V., like 
> Zwiebelfreunde e.V., who run torservers.net 
> .

Absolutely! I meant to use LLC's as an example as they are much easier
to form than a 501(c)3 exempt organization, but my wording was poor. I
intended that to be read, "any company that's not a sole proprietorship."

> I disagree again. We're on the verge of cheap,affordable 10GBit
> (as in torservers has just gotten an offer for unlimited traffic
> 10GBit for $750 with SWIP from a hoster who seems Tor friendly).
> This means, that 100mbit is getting cheaper and cheaper, as does
> GBit. 100mbit already comes at a price diadvantage compared to
> gbit, we don't nead to start on cost-effectiveness of 10mbit, not
> to mention that many people in the west could run 10mbit nodes from
> home by now.

Perhaps you're right; has anyone done any network simulations or run
any tests to see what would be better for network latency and/or
anonymity (more low-throughput relays, or a few larger relays)?

Regardless, I don't think the speed/bandwidth cap (if there is one)
should be set too high. In many countries it may be difficult—if not
impossible—to run a 10, or even a 1GBit node. As great as lots of
1(0+)GBit nodes would be, we don't want to end up with plenty of nodes
in the USA, GB, Germany, etc. and very few elsewhere. Geographic
diversity is also extremely important for the project. That being
said, if we can get good geographic diversity while only paying for
larger nodes it might be more cost-effective. Again, this might need
(further?) research.

—Sam


- -- 
Sam Whited
pub 4096R/EC2C9934

SamWhited.com
s...@samwhited.com
404.492.6008


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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Julian Wissmann]

Am 25.07.2012 um 21:31 schrieb delber:

> On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 05:14:44PM -0400, Andrew Lewis wrote:
>> $100 is not going to cut it most likely, even for only 100 mbit
>> traffic only. Most providers are really antsy about spam/DMCA reports,
>> and aren't willing to deal with it for that cheap. I'd suspect that
>> you are looking at the $150-$200+ range, at least in my experience.
> 
> We are a small group of people trying to setup something like
> torservers.net in France. We already made quite a bunch of contacts with
> a small amount of french ISP to ask them about hosting Tor exit relays.
> The list is long and we are not over yet. But here is what we know as
> today.
Je l'aime!
> 
> We already have ruled out the three major cheap hosting providers: OVH,
> Gandi and Dedibox. All of them are listed as bad ISPs on GoodBadISPs as
> prohibiting relays in their ToS. What is fun is that exit nodes running
> on their french IPs still account for 2.3353% of total P_exit (out of
> 2.6573% for all french exit nodes).
You can still go do it and try... but I suppose its not a good idea, once you 
run a relay big enough, with a policy that is open enough.
> 
> We have approached some other big commercial ISPs. It was not a formal
> inquiry, but they did not look very happy at the idea of hosting exit
> nodes.
You can also take a look at our wiki at torservers.net/wiki/. There is a list 
of ISPs that we've been in contact with, about Tor. We only run nodes with a 
small number of them. Thats also on our page/wiki. And Please, document your 
ISP contact, so that others don't have to redo that.
> 
> What we have found though, is that several smaller (not-for-profits or
> coops) ISPs would be happy to help the Tor network, provided there is a
> clear legal boundary. Something that our not-for-profit would create.
> The downside is that they are small, so the cost of their bandwidth is
> between a monthly 3€ and 10€ (when it is not even more) for each Mbps
> (95%ile). But they would stand in case of trouble. And some of them have
> an economic interest as using more bandwidth would lower their overall
> cost per Mbps.
Cool! There are also some of those, in Germany. Check them out, too. I don't 
know how cool they will be about Tor, or how much money they'll charge, though.
> 
> One of them is willing to sponsor some of the bandwidth, and it looks
> like a good place to start an initial set of nodes. But even with their
> sponsoring, $100/month will not cover hosting+bandwidth expenses.
True, but I think that you cannot expect Torproject or its sponsor to cover all 
of your costs. There are many, who are willing to give money to sponsor Tor 
nodes and they are the ones, who make sure, that the operators stay independent 
and diverse by giving their money or effort.
> 
> It might be something desirable though. If external funding does not
> cover all the costs, then we will have to campaign for other donations.
> A good habit, as it makes it more likely that at least some of the nodes
> would survive in case the external funding stops.
If money to kick this off is your problem I'm sure you'll find someone who will 
give it to you. Without a good sole like that, torservers wouldn't exist, 
either.
> 
> -- 
> delber

If you have any questions, or if we can help you guys in any way or want to 
stay in contact just write me an email at this address or julian [at] 
torservers.net. Would be great!

slightly ot: Serez-vous au Congress cet hiver?
Ce serait bien de vous y rencontrer et boire une biere ou mate. - Same applies 
to everyone else who will be there.

Julian



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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[delber]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 05:14:44PM -0400, Andrew Lewis wrote:
> $100 is not going to cut it most likely, even for only 100 mbit
> traffic only. Most providers are really antsy about spam/DMCA reports,
> and aren't willing to deal with it for that cheap. I'd suspect that
> you are looking at the $150-$200+ range, at least in my experience.

We are a small group of people trying to setup something like
torservers.net in France. We already made quite a bunch of contacts with
a small amount of french ISP to ask them about hosting Tor exit relays.
The list is long and we are not over yet. But here is what we know as
today.

We already have ruled out the three major cheap hosting providers: OVH,
Gandi and Dedibox. All of them are listed as bad ISPs on GoodBadISPs as
prohibiting relays in their ToS. What is fun is that exit nodes running
on their french IPs still account for 2.3353% of total P_exit (out of
2.6573% for all french exit nodes).

We have approached some other big commercial ISPs. It was not a formal
inquiry, but they did not look very happy at the idea of hosting exit
nodes.

What we have found though, is that several smaller (not-for-profits or
coops) ISPs would be happy to help the Tor network, provided there is a
clear legal boundary. Something that our not-for-profit would create.
The downside is that they are small, so the cost of their bandwidth is
between a monthly 3€ and 10€ (when it is not even more) for each Mbps
(95%ile). But they would stand in case of trouble. And some of them have
an economic interest as using more bandwidth would lower their overall
cost per Mbps.

One of them is willing to sponsor some of the bandwidth, and it looks
like a good place to start an initial set of nodes. But even with their
sponsoring, $100/month will not cover hosting+bandwidth expenses.


It might be something desirable though. If external funding does not
cover all the costs, then we will have to campaign for other donations.
A good habit, as it makes it more likely that at least some of the nodes
would survive in case the external funding stops.

-- 
delber


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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Julian Wissmann]

I largely agree with Sam, I just want to make some additions, here.

> On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Roger Dingledine  wrote:
>> Open questions we need to decide about:
>> 
>> 1) What exactly would we pay for?
>> 
> 
> As you said, reimbursing users for hosting is probably the best idea
> here, however, we also don't want to get in the situation where users
> feel that they _must_ be reimbursed to run an exit relay. What happens
> if the sponsors funding dries up in a year and no one wants to donate
> bandwidth anymore?
> 
> Perhaps only registered companies should be sponsored — as much as I
> hate to limit the scope of the project, I think this (might) prevent
> abuse to a certain extent. Individuals who wanted to run an exit relay
> of their own could still do so, they would just have to use some of
> the money to form an LLC (or whatever their countries equivalent is if
> the scope of this project extends outside of the US). This gives them
> a bit more of an incentive to separate their Tor node form their
> personal server/computing resources (in the form of limited
> liability), which they should probably be doing anyways.

Please don't forget non profits, like 501(c)3, under which probably many 
hackerspaces in the US fall or the german e.V., like Zwiebelfreunde e.V., who 
run torservers.net. 
In general this is the right direction to go. I think organizations are most 
likely to be the most reliable partners for this, and they are easy enough to 
establish. 
Organizations have their own accounting, usually donations to them are tax 
deductible, and they are normally run by more than one person, which allows for 
a certain scalability by sharing work. Overall, this gives them, and you more 
transparency and I think, that makes stuff like 501(c)3 or whatever equivalent 
in any other other country near perfect for everyone involved in this.
> 
>> I think we should aim to constrain ourselves to talking about >=100mbit
>> exits
>> 
> 
> I disagree; as others have said, lots of 10mbit relays will do as much
> for the network as a few 100mbit relays. Most peoples use case is
> simply checking email, browsing the web, reading news, etc. which
> don't necessarily need a huge 100mbit relay.

I disagree again. We're on the verge of cheap,affordable 10GBit (as in 
torservers has just gotten an offer for unlimited traffic 10GBit for $750 with 
SWIP from a hoster who seems Tor friendly). This means, that 100mbit is getting 
cheaper and cheaper, as does GBit. 100mbit already comes at a price diadvantage 
compared to gbit, we don't nead to start on cost-effectiveness of 10mbit, not 
to mention that many people in the west could run 10mbit nodes from home by now.
> 
>> 2) Should we fund existing relays or new ones?
>> 
> 
> It's probably not wise to distinguish between the two. If you only
> fund new relays, you may see a lot of old relays shut down (and then
> restarted as "new relays" to get funding). So you might as well just
> sponsor both. More thoughts on this in a bit.

Exactly. 
> 
>> - Should we prefer big collectives like torservers, noisetor, CCC,
>> dfri.se, and riseup (which can get great bulk rates on bandwidth and are
>> big enough to have relationships with local lawyers and ISPs), or should
>> we prefer individuals since they maximize our operator diversity? I think
>> "explore both approaches" is a fine first plan.
>> 
> 
> "Explore both approaches" sounds good; I think we'll find that
> operator diversity leads to a healthier (more anonymous) network.
> Again, I lean towards small guys that will run a few nodes at
> different data centers, but not Sole proprietorship's.

Maximize diversity, definitely, but do the organizations approach at the same 
time. Counting in hackerspaces and the existing organizations running Tor nodes 
should give enough diversity for a start, while going organizations only will 
(hopefully) encourage more people to establish organizations around Tor.
> 
>> - For existing relays who pay for hosting…
> 
> Picking a certain monthly transfer target might solve this; so
> existing relays that are fast could apply for aid, and it would give
> slower relays incentive to speed up. The challenge then becomes, where
> do we set this cutoff? I'm inclined to think it could be kept
> relatively low and still be very beneficial for the network.
> 
> 
>> the Tor network must not end up
>> addicted to external funding. So long as everybody is running an exit
>> relay because they want to save the world, I think we should be fine.
>> 
> 
> This is the core of the entire discussion. We might also consider only
> funding relays in areas where we need the diversity by taking into
> account…
> 
>> There's network diversity (AS / upstream network topology), organization
>> and operator diversity, jurisdictional (country) diversity, funding
>> diversity, data-center diversity, and more.
>> 
> 
> …this stuff.
> 
>> 
>> 7) How do we audit / track the sponsored relays?
>> 
>> How should we ch

Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Julian Wissmann]

Hi Roger, list
> 
> I want to draw your attention to a thread I've started on the tor-relays
> list:
> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-July/001433.html
> 
> In short, we have a funder who wants to sponsor more and faster Tor
> exits, and we're brainstorming about how to use the money in a way that
> makes the network stronger but also doesn't screw up the "community"
> side of the Tor relay operator community. The first step is collecting
> facts about the current fast Tor exit relays.

Awesome!
> 
> It would be great if you could join the conversation and give us your
> perspective (either on the tor-relays list or in private, whichever
> you prefer). I really want to make sure the current relay operators are
> included in the decisions.
> 
> Also, if you are interested in sharing, it would be great to learn
> (separated by exit relay if you run more than one):
> 
> - What do you currently pay for hosting/bandwidth, and how much bandwidth
> do you get for that?
This differs a lot, please all keep in mind, that we get supported by some of 
our hosters through cheaper pricing, etc. I'll try to point that out.

nforce.nl
565€ for 100TB outbound traffic on GBit, inbound is free and a second node 
sponsored by them.
2 Tor nodes running on each

axigy
$199 for unmetered GBit (currently down due to law enforcement). This price is 
half of their regular rate.

limehost/voxility
104€ for unmetered, shared GBit
Three Tor nodes running on it

Our 100mbit nodes are actually all sponsored. One by psilo.fr, four by 
defaultroute.net
> 
> - Is it a stable hosting situation? For example, how do they handle
> abuse complaints so far?
We currently only use hosters, that SWIP IPs to us, as we've not made good 
experiences otherwise. All of our current hosters are very tolerant when it 
comes to abuses and can be considered stable (not counting in technical 
difficulties that we've had with one node).
> 
> 
> - Is your hosting situation one where it could make sense for us to
> reimburse your bandwidth costs? (Some people have a deal through their
> employer, friend, etc where they don't pay for hosting.)
For some of our nodes it would make sense, for others not so much. 
The problem we face as a non profit is, that while we get lots of donations not 
all of them (and especially not the larger ones, as those usually are one-time) 
are plannable. So essentially this would be a great opportunity for us 
(assumibg, that this would run uninterrupted for more than a year) to get a 
larger amount of long term plannable funding.
> 
> - Are you in a position to get more bandwidth if you pay more? At what
> rates? We're most interested in sponsoring >=100mbit relays.
Depends on what you mean. 
In the sense of getting more servers: Yes, definitely. For the sake of 
diversity it is hard to estimate, though, as nearly every ISP has a different 
pricing and different reliability. It would probably be hard to find another 
hoster in the limehost/voxility pricerange, but I think that somewhere in 
between axigy and nforce is certainly doable for GBit, which would give 2-3 Tor 
nodes. 
> 
> - Do you have other locations in mind where you would run another exit
> relay if you didn't have to pay for it?
Definitely.
As I've mentioned in my other email, we've got an offer for 10GBit 
unmetered@750€, which is kind of sweet spot performance/buck wise and I guess, 
that it could handle 8-12 Tor nodes performance wise to satisfy the pipe. It 
would be a large number of high performance nodes run by just one operator, 
though, so I'm unsure if it really is that great idea :-(

If we're not doing that we'll look into getting at least one other gbit node, 
though.
> 
> - What else should we be asking here? :)
One question, that immediately came to my mind was: How will this affect other 
donors?

Only time will tell, I guess and I hope that people will realize, that it is 
just an additional incentive to get operators to run reliable, fast nodes. 

What about legal stuff?

We haven't had legal problems, so far. We're operating out of germany and have 
a cool lawyer, but what about others? How do they tackle the legal situation, 
what about covering the financial burden, if they get in legal trouble over 
Tor. 
In other words: Do we need a Tor legal fund to go with operator funding or will 
the community be willing/committed/able to absorb the risks.

Julian

> 
> Thanks!
> --Roger
> """
> 
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Mike Perry]

Thus spake Nils Vogels (bacardic...@gmail.com):

> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Mike Perry wrote:
> 
> > Thus spake k...@damnfbi.tk (k...@damnfbi.tk):
> >
> > > Hey all,
> > > Have you contemplated sending this over to the hackerspaces list?
> >
> > There exists THE list for hackerspaces? Well hot damn. Are these them:
> > http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/
> >
> > Also, how do we recognize reputable Hackerspaces from "Sketchy bunch of
> > d00dz who think it will be totally awesome fun to pwn a bunch of Tor
> > users?" Should we check for previous reliable Tor relays from them?
> > Should we just not care?
> 
> It's funny this comes up now :) I know for a fact that most Dutch
> hackerspaces either run a tor node, or have a member running a Tor node.
> Their motives have never been questioned, so why start now :)

Yeah, I was asking a subset of Roger's parent question: "Should we fund
new relays by new people, fund new relays by existing community members,
or fund upgrades to existing relays by existing community members?"

I think if we just start dumping money on total strangers who have never
run Tor exits before, it is less likely to lead to a stable outcome
where those exits continue to exist.

> In most countries there is a foundation covering multiple hackerspaces,
> these are usually where you'd want to start. If you need some more contacts
> in the Benelux and UK area, I can lend a hand.

Good suggestion. I do generally agree that hackerspaces are a great
untapped potential for running more Tor nodes. It is definitely
something that should be explored. Not sure who (if anyone) is tasked
with driving this whole exit sponsoring initiative yet, though.

I also like the idea of favoring larger, better organized hackerspaces
that are more likely to be able to continue to manage their exits over
the long term.


-- 
Mike Perry


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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Rejo Zenger]

Hi,

I am not in the position to comment on what would be good for the network, 
there are others more knowledgeable - like yourself. There's not much to add to 
your remarks. Having said that, I can comment on what I would change for me.

I am currently providing a fast exit node on a colocated server I already was 
running. It's using spare traffic and bandwidth. Current limitations are based 
on the policy "use anything that's left, as long as it doesn't cost me any 
bucks". I am more than happy to spend time and effort in running relays, but I 
don't have the budget to pay for more.

> 2) Should we fund existing relays or new ones?

I would be able to help out with both. For me there would be at least three 
scenario's. 

1) If there's reimbursement for (additional traffic on) existing relays, I 
would be able to add more traffic a month on my current relay. I would increase 
the limits on bandwidth and traffic. That way, an existing relay would be able 
to do more traffic. 

2) If there's reimbursement for everything that is needed to run a relay, I 
would be able to add a new server. I would find other ISP's that sell VPS's or, 
when I would be able to get a new box, I could add another one at my current 
ISP. That way, a new relay would be added.

3) If there's reimbursement for even more, I would set up a non-proft 
foundation running multiple nodes. These nodes would ideally be spread amongst 
a couple of ISP's. That way, I would be able to add a couple of new relays.

> More generally, we need to consider sustainability. Our current exit
> relay funding is for a period of 12 months, and while there's reason to
> think we will find continued support, the Tor network must not end up
> addicted to external funding. So long as everybody is running an exit
> relay because they want to save the world, I think we should be fine.

Given the above scenario's the sustainability largely depends on the scale. For 
example, when I would be reimbursed for the additional costs of the additional 
traffic, I can easily back down after 12 months. When running a foundation it 
would be more difficult to simply quit just because the sponsoring comes to a 
halt. On the other hand, a foundation would be run by multiple people, and as 
long as there is money to cover the costs of the relays, it would be a lot more 
stable than a number of smaller nodes.

> 7) How do we audit / track the sponsored relays?
> 
> How should we check that your 100mbit relay is really working? What do
> we measure to confirm its capacity? To a first approximation I'm fine
> assuming that nobody is going to try to cheat (say, by colluding with
> an ISP to write legit-looking invoices but then just split the money).

And what happens if there's doubt about the node someone is running? For a 
starter, maybe a solution would be: individuals are reimbursed a limited amount 
only, where larger amounts is available to legally registered foundations. 

-- 
Rejo Zenger .  . 0x21DBEFD4 . 
GPG encrypted e-mail preferred . +31.6.39642738 . @rejozenger



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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Jon]

 I am impressed with the amount of good discussion so far, in stead of the
' mine is better than yours ' syndrome or ' i know more than you ' .

Along with what has been discussed and beginning proposals so far, in the
infancy here, What about finding a way, if not to much of a headache,
trying to utilize some of the exit relays we already have that their
allocated bandwidth is not being used now.

I know their are some factor that need to be considered, and the latest is
the balancing that was recently incorporated into the Tor system, which
was  brought up in earlier threads.

It would be nice for those people that already have a server running, that
have the sources to be able to use more of their bandwidth.

I can only speak for my self here, but I know that I had hoped that when I
started a exit relay, that more of my bandwidth would be used. Which at the
present on a dedicated server is at very minimal usage..

Just food for thought  :)

Jon
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Sam Whited]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Roger Dingledine  wrote:
> Open questions we need to decide about:
>
> 1) What exactly would we pay for?
>

As you said, reimbursing users for hosting is probably the best idea
here, however, we also don't want to get in the situation where users
feel that they _must_ be reimbursed to run an exit relay. What happens
if the sponsors funding dries up in a year and no one wants to donate
bandwidth anymore?

Perhaps only registered companies should be sponsored — as much as I
hate to limit the scope of the project, I think this (might) prevent
abuse to a certain extent. Individuals who wanted to run an exit relay
of their own could still do so, they would just have to use some of
the money to form an LLC (or whatever their countries equivalent is if
the scope of this project extends outside of the US). This gives them
a bit more of an incentive to separate their Tor node form their
personal server/computing resources (in the form of limited
liability), which they should probably be doing anyways.

> I think we should aim to constrain ourselves to talking about >=100mbit
> exits
>

I disagree; as others have said, lots of 10mbit relays will do as much
for the network as a few 100mbit relays. Most peoples use case is
simply checking email, browsing the web, reading news, etc. which
don't necessarily need a huge 100mbit relay.

> 2) Should we fund existing relays or new ones?
>

It's probably not wise to distinguish between the two. If you only
fund new relays, you may see a lot of old relays shut down (and then
restarted as "new relays" to get funding). So you might as well just
sponsor both. More thoughts on this in a bit.

> - Should we prefer big collectives like torservers, noisetor, CCC,
> dfri.se, and riseup (which can get great bulk rates on bandwidth and are
> big enough to have relationships with local lawyers and ISPs), or should
> we prefer individuals since they maximize our operator diversity? I think
> "explore both approaches" is a fine first plan.
>

"Explore both approaches" sounds good; I think we'll find that
operator diversity leads to a healthier (more anonymous) network.
Again, I lean towards small guys that will run a few nodes at
different data centers, but not Sole proprietorship's.

> - For existing relays who pay for hosting…

Picking a certain monthly transfer target might solve this; so
existing relays that are fast could apply for aid, and it would give
slower relays incentive to speed up. The challenge then becomes, where
do we set this cutoff? I'm inclined to think it could be kept
relatively low and still be very beneficial for the network.


> the Tor network must not end up
> addicted to external funding. So long as everybody is running an exit
> relay because they want to save the world, I think we should be fine.
>

This is the core of the entire discussion. We might also consider only
funding relays in areas where we need the diversity by taking into
account…

> There's network diversity (AS / upstream network topology), organization
> and operator diversity, jurisdictional (country) diversity, funding
> diversity, data-center diversity, and more.
>

…this stuff.

>
> 7) How do we audit / track the sponsored relays?
>
> How should we check that your 100mbit relay is really working? What do
> we measure to confirm its capacity? To a first approximation I'm fine
> assuming that nobody is going to try to cheat (say, by colluding with
> an ISP to write legit-looking invoices but then just split the money).
>

Probably better to monitor this carefully from the get-go. Sponsors
like to know where their money is going, and continued funding could
hinge on it.

> Then I'll send individual emails to exit relay operators pointing them
> to it and asking for their feedback
>

Consider asking some of the faster / more stable non-exit relay
operators as well. Many of these folks (myself included) have run an
exit relay at one point or another and stopped—or want to run an exit
but won't—because of the financial burden, or because of legal
ramifications, etc.

Some of them might want to run an exit relay, or change their existing
nodes to exit relays if they could only get a bit of funding to help
cover bandwidth and separate their personal resources / business from
their exit node(s) (via a new server, or a separate business entity,
etc.)


Best,
Sam


-- 
Sam Whited
pub 4096R/EC2C9934

SamWhited.com
s...@samwhited.com
404.492.6008
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[kupo]

Hey all,
Has anyone contemplated pitching this towards hackerspaces running their 
own fast nodes?
While most have a decent connection to support their space and users I'm 
sure it would pair well and also allow them to supplement their meager 
income. Plus if they're already incorporated or non-prof it allows them 
a bit more protection from random LEO problems and a common community to 
draw experience from.

-kupo

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Mike]

In my short experience of running an exit relay on a cheap vps I can say.
You can do this on less than 30 a month. It might not be true 100 mbit 24/7
but does that really matter? If you get enough interested parties it should
balance out right?
For surfing/email etc 10 mbit is plenty I think? Mine averaged around 10
mbit/s 24/7 which isn't bad for a cheap unlimited
vps. Who doesn't like a fast ToR network but the reality is, those speeds
are perfectly acceptable for most of what
ToR users do. If for some reason you need to upload a few gigs of leaked
files, than force the network to connect to one of the faster relays. (but
even still there are a lot residential connections that can't utilize the
full upstream bandwidth the exit offers anyway)
If you lock the exit ports down, there should not be any DMCA issues with
the provider and you.
I never was called out for issues with spam. Forum admins who deal with
spam have several ways of dealing with it. So unless someone decides to use
your exit for email spam and a lot of it. I wouldn't worry about the spam
shutting
down any exit relays. Haven't read of that on the list yet actually. DMCA
will indeed make your provider not like you.
in closing, don't discredit the cheaper solutions. They do work just fine
and you don't need a pocket of money to throw at something.
Telling the provider what you plan on doing and educating them works
wonders as well. It has for me at least.



On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 3:23 AM, Nils Vogels  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Mike Perry wrote:
>
>> Thus spake k...@damnfbi.tk (k...@damnfbi.tk):
>>
>> > Hey all,
>> > Have you contemplated sending this over to the hackerspaces list?
>>
>> There exists THE list for hackerspaces? Well hot damn. Are these them:
>> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/
>
>
> Yeah, that's the one :-)
>
>
>> Is there a specific sub-list we should focus on? Announce? Discuss?
>> Other?
>>
>
> Probably the main list, possibly discuss.
>
>
>>
>> Also, how do we recognize reputable Hackerspaces from "Sketchy bunch of
>> d00dz who think it will be totally awesome fun to pwn a bunch of Tor
>> users?" Should we check for previous reliable Tor relays from them?
>> Should we just not care?
>>
>
> It's funny this comes up now :) I know for a fact that most Dutch
> hackerspaces either run a tor node, or have a member running a Tor node.
> Their motives have never been questioned, so why start now :)
>
> In most countries there is a foundation covering multiple hackerspaces,
> these are usually where you'd want to start. If you need some more contacts
> in the Benelux and UK area, I can lend a hand.
> --
> Simple guidelines to happiness:
> Work like you don't need the money,
> Love like your heart has never been broken and
> Dance like no one can see you.
>
> ___
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>
>
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Mike Perry]

Thus spake k...@damnfbi.tk (k...@damnfbi.tk):

> Hey all,
> Have you contemplated sending this over to the hackerspaces list?

There exists THE list for hackerspaces? Well hot damn. Are these them:
http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/

Is there a specific sub-list we should focus on? Announce? Discuss?
Other?

Also, how do we recognize reputable Hackerspaces from "Sketchy bunch of
d00dz who think it will be totally awesome fun to pwn a bunch of Tor
users?" Should we check for previous reliable Tor relays from them?
Should we just not care?


-- 
Mike Perry


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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Nils Vogels]

Hi,

On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 9:17 AM, Mike Perry wrote:

> Thus spake k...@damnfbi.tk (k...@damnfbi.tk):
>
> > Hey all,
> > Have you contemplated sending this over to the hackerspaces list?
>
> There exists THE list for hackerspaces? Well hot damn. Are these them:
> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/


Yeah, that's the one :-)


> Is there a specific sub-list we should focus on? Announce? Discuss?
> Other?
>

Probably the main list, possibly discuss.


>
> Also, how do we recognize reputable Hackerspaces from "Sketchy bunch of
> d00dz who think it will be totally awesome fun to pwn a bunch of Tor
> users?" Should we check for previous reliable Tor relays from them?
> Should we just not care?
>

It's funny this comes up now :) I know for a fact that most Dutch
hackerspaces either run a tor node, or have a member running a Tor node.
Their motives have never been questioned, so why start now :)

In most countries there is a foundation covering multiple hackerspaces,
these are usually where you'd want to start. If you need some more contacts
in the Benelux and UK area, I can lend a hand.
-- 
Simple guidelines to happiness:
Work like you don't need the money,
Love like your heart has never been broken and
Dance like no one can see you.
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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[kupo]

Hey all,
Have you contemplated sending this over to the hackerspaces list?
They are often:

   geographically diverse
   can be be incorporated or non-profit
   understand or have heard of Tor
   usually  pay for a decently fast connection for their space already
   are familiar with hosting services already

I'm sure being able to supplement their small income by doing something 
like this would interest them as well.

-kupo


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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 02:58:54PM -0400, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> Next steps:
[...]
> Then I'll send individual emails to exit relay operators pointing them
> to it and asking for their feedback (on the list or private, whichever
> they prefer). I'll also try to get some sense of how much their hosting
> costs, whether they'd want to participate in our experiment, whether
> they're in a position to ramp up to a faster connection, etc.

For context and transparency, here's the mail I've been sending current
fast exit relay operators. Please feel free to answer it here if you
prefer.

"""
I want to draw your attention to a thread I've started on the tor-relays
list:
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-July/001433.html

In short, we have a funder who wants to sponsor more and faster Tor
exits, and we're brainstorming about how to use the money in a way that
makes the network stronger but also doesn't screw up the "community"
side of the Tor relay operator community. The first step is collecting
facts about the current fast Tor exit relays.

It would be great if you could join the conversation and give us your
perspective (either on the tor-relays list or in private, whichever
you prefer). I really want to make sure the current relay operators are
included in the decisions.

Also, if you are interested in sharing, it would be great to learn
(separated by exit relay if you run more than one):

- What do you currently pay for hosting/bandwidth, and how much bandwidth
do you get for that?

- Is it a stable hosting situation? For example, how do they handle
abuse complaints so far?

- Is your hosting situation one where it could make sense for us to
reimburse your bandwidth costs? (Some people have a deal through their
employer, friend, etc where they don't pay for hosting.)

- Are you in a position to get more bandwidth if you pay more? At what
rates? We're most interested in sponsoring >=100mbit relays.

- Do you have other locations in mind where you would run another exit
relay if you didn't have to pay for it?

- What else should we be asking here? :)

Thanks!
--Roger
"""

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Roger Dingledine]

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 05:14:44PM -0400, Andrew Lewis wrote:
> $100 is not going to cut it most likely

That could be. I look forward to learning more about the options. Another
approach to explore is subsidizing bandwidth, that is, if you find a
place that's $175/mo we can make it like it's $75/mo for you.

That said, if it takes $200/mo to get a good 100mbit exit situation,
and we can't get enough other ways, then we shouldn't rule it out.

I'm especially nervous about creating a culture where our volunteers
flock to super-cheap colos, generate a few abuse complaints and make
those colos hate Tor, and then move on to the next one. There's only one
Internet, and we want ISPs to like Tor. That means building relationships.

> People spend a lot of time looking for server hosting on the cheap

Yes. We need volunteers continuing to do this work.

> Finding providers is a pain, unless you can get them to SWIP your address 
> block or otherwise reassign the IP address space abuse contacts to you. 
> 
> What are the requirements going to be on the exit nodes? Can the reduced exit 
> policy be used?

The sponsor wants 80, 443, 554, and 1755 open. I guess 554 and 1755
aren't in the standard reduced exit policy, but it's mighty close.

> And last of all I'd love to volunteer if you go the individual
>route, I ran an exit node before and know what it entails, FBI visits
>included.(Which is a separate and very real issue, equipment gets seized
>and doors get knocked on, make sure anyone going into this knows that).

We as a community need to continue to interact with law enforcement
groups to educate them about how this Internet thing works. I've had
great conversations with law enforcement in Germany, Sweden, and the
US, and I'm working on setting up meetings later this year with Dutch,
Belgian, and Austrian law enforcement groups. Andrew Lewman (our executive
director) is off to an Interpol meeting in a few months, to teach them
about Tor. We need to make it more than just a few of us though.

--Roger

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Andrew Lewis]

Roger,

I used to run a larger exit node a while back, and have a few quick comments. 

$100 is not going to cut it most likely, even for only 100 mbit traffic only. 
Most providers are really antsy about spam/DMCA reports, and aren't willing to 
deal with it for that cheap. I'd suspect that you are looking at the $150-$200+ 
range, at least in my experience. People spend a lot of time looking for server 
hosting on the cheap, and torservers.net has some useful experiences on what to 
look for. 

Finding providers is a pain, unless you can get them to SWIP your address block 
or otherwise reassign the IP address space abuse contacts to you. 

What are the requirements going to be on the exit nodes? Can the reduced exit 
policy be used?

And last of all I'd love to volunteer if you go the individual route, I ran an 
exit node before and know what it entails, FBI visits included.(Which is a 
separate and very real issue, equipment gets seized and doors get knocked on, 
make sure anyone going into this knows that).

-Andrew




On Jul 23, 2012, at 2:58 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote:

> For a few years now, funders have been asking if they can pay Tor to
> run more relays. I kept telling them their money was better spent on
> code and design improvements:
> https://blog.torproject.org/blog/why-tor-is-slow
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/roadmaps/Tor/Performance
> since a) network load would just grow to fill whatever new capacity we
> have, especially if we don't deal with the tiny fraction of users who
> do bulk downloads, and b) reducing diversity of relay operator control
> can harm anonymity.
> 
> But lately the Tor network has become noticeably faster, and I think it
> has a lot to do with the growing amount of excess relay capacity relative
> to network load:
> https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html?graph=bandwidth&start=2010-06-01&end=2012-07-21#bandwidth
> 
> At the same time, much of our performance improvement comes from better
> load balancing -- that is, concentrating traffic on the relays that can
> handle it better. The result though is a direct tradeoff with relay
> diversity: on today's network, clients choose one of the fastest 5 exit
> relays around 25-30% of the time, and 80% of their choices come from a
> pool of 40-50 relays.
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6443
> 
> Since extra capacity is clearly good for performance, and since we're
> not doing particularly well at diversity with the current approach,
> we're going to try an experiment: we'll connect funding to exit relay
> operators so they can run bigger and/or better exit relays.
> 
> If we do it right (make more faster exit relays that aren't the current
> biggest ones, so there are more to choose from), we will improve the
> network's diversity as well as being able to handle more users.
> 
> We've lined up our first funder (BBG, aka http://www.voanews.com/),
> and they're excited to have us start as soon as we can. They want to
> sponsor 125+ fast exits.
> 
> --
> 
> Open questions we need to decide about:
> 
> 1) What exactly would we pay for?
> 
> I think the right way to do it is to offer to reimburse bandwidth/hosting
> costs -- I don't want to get into the business of paying people to
> run relays, and I don't want people to be trying to figure out how to
> "profit". That leads to all sorts of horrible incentive structures.
> 
> More broadly, we should keep in mind that the primary cost of running an
> exit relay is effort, not dollars: it takes dedication to find an ISP
> who will host it, and to hold that ISP's hand when an abuse complaint
> arrives. Or said another way, hosting costs are in many cases not the
> biggest barrier to running an exit relay.
> 
> I think we should aim to constrain ourselves to talking about >=100mbit
> exits, assuming that turns out to give us enough choices. That said,
> we don't want to concentrate bandwidth too much in any given relay,
> so we should limit the amount we'll reimburse per relay.
> 
> 2) Should we fund existing relays or new ones?
> 
> The worst failure mode here would be that we screw up the current
> community of relay operators. That's why it's extra important to keep
> them involved at each step of this discussion.
> 
> I think the right answer is probably a balance of reimbursing costs from
> current exits and encouraging new exits to appear. Before we can get
> more precise though, we need to get a handle on how many current fast
> exits there are, and what their constraints are (whether their hosting
> situation could give them more bandwidth, whether they're paying now or
> getting a deal through a friend/employer, etc).
> 
> Even then, there are interesting further questions like:
> 
> - Should we prefer big collectives like torservers, noisetor, CCC,
> dfri.se, and riseup (which can get great bulk rates on bandwidth and are
> big enough to have relationships with