Title: Tor part 4: run a relay

	Title: Tor part 4: run a relay
	Author: Solène
	Date: 08 November 2018
	Tags: unix tor
	Description:

	In this fourth Tor article, I will _quickly_ cover how to run a Tor
	relay, the
	Tor project already have a very nice and up-to-date Guide for setting a
	relay.
	Those relays are what make Tor usable, with more relay, Tor gets more
	bandwidth
	and it makes you harder to trace, because that would mean more traffic
	to
	analyze.

	A relay server can be an exit node, which will relay Tor traffic to
	the
	outside. This implies a lot of legal issues, the Tor project foundation
	offers
	to help you if your exit node gets you in trouble.

	Remember that being an exit node is optional. Most relays are not
	exit
	nodes. They will either relay traffic between relays, or become a
	guard
	which is an entry point to the Tor network. The guard gets the request
	over
	non-tor network and send it to the next relay of the user circuit.

	Running a relay requires a lot of CPU (capable of some crypto) and a
	huge
	amount of bandwidth. Running a relay requires at least a bandwidth of
	10Mb/s,
	this is a minimal requirement. If you have less, you can still run a
	bridge
	with obfs4 but I won't cover it here.

	When running a relay, you will be able to set a daily/weekly/monthly
	traffic
	limit, so your relay will stop relaying when it reach the quota. It's
	quiet
	useful if you don't have unmeasured bandwidth, you can also limit the
	bandwidth
	allowed to Tor.

	To get real-time information about your relay, the software Nyx
	(net/nyx) is a
	Tor top-like front end which show Tor CPU usage, bandwidth,
	connections, log in
	real time.

	[The awesome Official Tor
	guide](https://blog.torproject.org/new-guide-running-tor-relay)