Guidance for starting volunteering

Support Relay Operator
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1

Hi! I’m new to hosting and would love to grow from just donating to hosting WebTunnel bridges and middle relays. Could someone please provide some guidance with the following:

  • I’m looking to rent VPS services and spend $20-$30 USD per month tops. How many WebTunnels bridges and middle relays could I afford to run on this budget?
  • Aside from a VPS and domain per bridge and relay, is there any other service I will need?
  • How much does the VPS and domain provider’s country matter? (14 eyes or not – this seems to heavily impact price).
  • If I’m new to hosting and not too technically savvy, should I opt for a managed provider?

I found the following service providers to be the most attractive, please share your thoughts on which would be best and if there are any other providers that you recommend instead.

VPS:

  • FlokiNET
    Cost: € 7.99 Per month (+ one-time setup fee of €5/$5.14).
    Location: Romania
    Traffic: 1 Gbit Uplink / 3 TB
    Processor: 1 Core CPU
    RAM: 1 GB
    Storage: 20 GB NVMe
    1 IPv4 & /64 IPv6
    KVM-based
    DDoS Protection (1 Tbps+)
    Virtual IPMI - Remote Control Console

  • Virtual Systems
    Cost: $5.00 Per month (Free setup)
    Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
    Bandwidth: 200 Mbps Unmetered
    Managed
    2 backups + 1 snapshot
    1 vCPU
    1 GB RAM
    Storage: 10 GB
    Linux
    DDOS protection

Domain Hosts:

  • Hostinger
    $1 per year
    Based in Lithuania
    .xyz domain

  • NameCheap
    $6 per year
    Based USA
    .xyz domain

Thank you in advance!

2

I have used IncogNET before. They allow monero (XMR) payments and are reliable. Their customer service is slow to repond though if you ever need help. They have a netherlands VPS plan for $9 and allows 10TB for in/out traffic so you’ll need to use the acocuntingmax setting to not run out of bandwidth. They allow exit nodes.

I currently use Servers.guru to run a guard node. They seem to be a new but, so far they have been good. They allow payments in monero (XMR) , they have an onion site for the control panel, their customer service has a good response time, and they have unmetered VPS for 5 Euros. I will say their Canada node has been under maintnance but, it seems to be over at the moment.

These providers allow traditional payment methods I just mentioned crypto in case you want more privacy.

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Thanks for sharing! So would you suggest Servers.guru since they offer unmetered bandwidth? (From my understanding, this means unlimited data use)?

4

You can inspire from this ISP lists

  1. Tor Project | Good Bad ISPs
  2. https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/185210/tor-relay-bridge

Also BlackFriday was/will be a good period to get various offers for 15-30euro/year/vps

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Incoming traffic is unlimited. There is a 20TB limit for outgoing traffic and it is 2 euro/ 1TB every extra TB over that. I have not exceeded the bandwidth limit yet with accountingmax setting off in the 2 months I had my relay. Once it completes its lifescycle it may use more bandwidth but for the price 20TB outgoing traffic is still a good deal in my opinion.

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I personally like to look for VPS providers in countries that are underrepresented to improve the decentralization of the network.

You can find many local hosting providers that host none or just a few relays this way (we are not just looking at country distribution, but also at ISP distribution)

For example, you can set the search region on DuckDuckGo to any country you like and search for a keyword like “VPS”

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