Hi everyone,
I’ve been using Tor for a while and noticed that during certain times of the day, my connection seems slower than usual. I understand that network congestion can be a factor, but I’m curious about how Tor manages heavy traffic loads.
Does the Tor network prioritize certain types of traffic, or is it purely based on available bandwidth? Also, are there any best practices to improve speed when browsing through Tor during peak hours?
Thanks!
I’m curious about how Tor manages heavy traffic loads
Nitty gritty (slightly more user friendly to read).
The same nitty gritty as a git repo.
Does the Tor network prioritize certain types of traffic,
No. Email, web browsing, text chats, ssh, etcetera, all TCP traffic is treated equally.
I guess technically one could say UDP traffic is 100% ignored, so in a way it does get zero priority, but that’s not what you really mean, I think.
or is it purely based on available bandwidth?
With or without tor the speed of your connection depends on a number of independent variables like your hardware, how much RAM you have, the speed of your storage device, how much your OS and other apps are taxing your system, your network speed/congestion, your ISP’s speed/congestion, how many hops on the Internet it takes to get to the site you’re trying to reach, how busy that site is, etcetera.
Using Tor Browser adds another layer of variables on top of that. Mainly the speed of the circuits tor builds for Tor Browser to use. Also, the miscreants who don’t like the tor network and try to harm it.
Check out the Metrics site to see lots of statistics and graphs. However, the stats don’t get into the hourly range, but…it’s educational anyway.
It’s been a number of years since doing a bunch of reading on this, so hopefully I will be gently corrected where I’m incorrect, but there are 7 directory/bandwidth authorities. They conduct routine speed tests to rate every relay, except for maybe bridges. I have a feeling my snowflake proxy isn’t speed tested by the bandwidth authorities, but perhaps by the snowflake broker.
The tor binary in Tor Browser uses that information, and some other factors, to choose relays to build circuits through.
It’s possible there are some places on the globe where accessing the tor network is slower at certain times of day more than others, but…perhaps you’ve heard the saying “it’s always 5 pm somewhere.” (Which I just learned is a song.)