I’m scheduled to be up and running with a 5 gigabit symmetric FTTH connection next month, and am simultaneously interested in becoming a relay operator. After reviewing the FAQ I believe an exit node is beyond my ability here, but within that constraint I’d like to figure out how to make the best use of available bandwidth. I see on the forum that most relays only push ~10MB/s, and see that so far on my own. Is there a way to voluntarily increase that? Do people run multiple instances of tor relay behind one IP?
I’m currently running a middle relay and dockerized snowflake. I’m not sure if I should be doing that though.
A big factor for speed is how good or bad your ISPs peering is. Basically the bandwidth authorities will try and measure your throughput individually and based on their consensus your “observed” bandwidth is calculated and used to push that amount of traffic to your node. If you have a new node, it can take time for things to average out and get a real feel for what your node bandwidth is.
You can see what the bandwidth authorities think about your speed: https://consensus-health.torproject.org/
Scroll to the bottom and enter your relay fingerprint/nickname and click Load.
From what I’ve seen, it’s generally not recommended to run more than one type of TOR node on the same machine for security, privacy and overall tor health reasons. Running several middle/exit relays on the same machine seems to be the generally accepted method to more fully utilize your available resources.