On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 1:26 PM, mick <m...@rlogin.net> wrote: > On Mon, 18 Feb 2013 02:05:40 -0800 > Andrea Shepard <and...@torproject.org> allegedly wrote: > >> On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 04:59:09AM -0500, grarpamp wrote: >> > > I thought I would let you know: Our US hoster is regularly >> > > contacted by law enforcement about our exits there. Some agents >> > > ask if the traffic pattern is balanced, ie. if the same amount of >> > > traffic enters and leaves the box. >> > > >> > > I always argue that this is a good indicator for Tor traffic, and >> > > that it is bad to mix Tor traffic with other traffic for that >> > > exact reason. >> > >> > Due to encryption and compression it might only be balanced to >> > within some typical ratio. I'm sure you have a handle on that >> > number. But that any non 1:1 ratio could make it appear to be >> > serving (or receiving) continual amounts of data. Which in the eye >> > of agents could raise question. Another question is whether these >> > US hosts are just volunteering this data to whoever comes asking, >> > with or without your instruction, or complying with formal legal >> > orders? >> > >> > On the plus side, hopefully everyone is coming away with the >> > fact that it's just an uninteresting, agnostic, relay service and >> > time is better spent elsewhere. >> >> Interesting; I'm pretty sure we do not use TLS compression. Nick M., >> that's true, yeah? >> >> On the other hand, it could also be unbalanced because of: >> >> * Using that Tor process as a client >> * Running a hidden service on that Tor process >> * Running a directory mirror >> > > For anyone who is interested I have posted the vnstat stats for my > newest relay (0xbaddad) at http://rlogin.net/tor/bin-vnstats.txt > > Whilst not quite a 1:1 ratio, it is close enough I think to show > that this is simply an agnostic relay. However, would not an exit node > show unbalanced traffic? Most net activity these days is web browsing > which is decidedly asymmetric - small outbound requests result in much > larger inbound responses. Won't an exit relay reflect that as it is the > last hop before the actual target site? > > Mick
Well, every byte fetched from the target site will get relayed back to the original client, so the traffic ratio should be 1:1 (unless, as Andrea alluded to, the amount of bytes transported is significantly less due to compression). --Aaron > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > blog: baldric.net > gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > _______________________________________________ > tor-relays mailing list > tor-relays@lists.torproject.org > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays > _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
