[tor-relays] Raspberry Pi 4

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1

Hi,

So I am wondering, is a Raspberry Pi 4 a recommended device to run a tor relay on? In terms of traffic load, etc? Thanks.

···

–Keifer

2

There are no technical or economic reasons not to use Pi5, imho.

HTH. Marco

···

–Keifer

3

Greetings,

For a while, Pies were not powerful enough to handle high throughput traffic
that the network needed (and still needs). RAM was also very limited (relays at
minimum need 4GB these days).

And this all gets worst when DDoS happen where the Pies of the network are the
first one to die.

With the latest versions, they are quite more powerful. But, apart from CPU and
RAM, what is massively important for a relay is uptime and reliability.

That is where a Pie on your home desk can be not so great. It can't be seen as
just a fun experiment or just "I'll do that for 6 months until I can figure out
something better to do with the Pie" also :S...

The Tor network needs relays that are powerful (better speed, better at soaking
DDoS) and more importantly reliable and trustable. And so, if you are aiming
for that with a Pie4, by all means :).

Cheers!
David

···

On 01 Nov (18:15:13), Keifer Bly wrote:

Hi,

So I am wondering, is a Raspberry Pi 4 a recommended device to run a tor
relay on? In terms of traffic load, etc? Thanks.

--
LVhDzrGDlICa3f1oXA8PH221hdOB1qlpD6N7G58Keww=

4

Thanks all.

–Keifer

···

On Mon, Nov 4, 2024, 5:38 AM David Goulet <dgoulet@torproject.org> wrote:

On 01 Nov (18:15:13), Keifer Bly wrote:

Hi,

So I am wondering, is a Raspberry Pi 4 a recommended device to run a tor
relay on? In terms of traffic load, etc? Thanks.

Greetings,

For a while, Pies were not powerful enough to handle high throughput traffic
that the network needed (and still needs). RAM was also very limited (relays at
minimum need 4GB these days).

And this all gets worst when DDoS happen where the Pies of the network are the
first one to die.

With the latest versions, they are quite more powerful. But, apart from CPU and
RAM, what is massively important for a relay is uptime and reliability.

That is where a Pie on your home desk can be not so great. It can’t be seen as
just a fun experiment or just “I’ll do that for 6 months until I can figure out
something better to do with the Pie” also :S…

The Tor network needs relays that are powerful (better speed, better at soaking
DDoS) and more importantly reliable and trustable. And so, if you are aiming
for that with a Pie4, by all means :).

Cheers!
David

–
LVhDzrGDlICa3f1oXA8PH221hdOB1qlpD6N7G58Keww=

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5

It's not powerful, but it certainly works, and if you have one around you can set it up and leave it alone until the next Tor release. I put vnstat (to measure network traffic) on mine a few months ago, and this is what it shows. I don't know why the numbers vary, but the Pi quietly moves one or two gigs of traffic a day without complaining.

$ vnstat -m --iface wlan0

wlan0 / monthly

        month rx | tx | total | avg. rate

···

On Monday, November 4th, 2024 at 04:33, Keifer Bly <keifer.bly@gmail.com> wrote:

So I am wondering, is a Raspberry Pi 4 a recommended device to run a tor relay on? In terms of traffic load, etc? Thanks.

     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
       2024-04 416.35 GiB | 428.03 GiB | 844.38 GiB | 2.80 Mbit/s
       2024-05 808.80 GiB | 842.77 GiB | 1.61 TiB | 5.30 Mbit/s
       2024-06 426.15 GiB | 429.83 GiB | 855.98 GiB | 2.84 Mbit/s
       2024-07 354.59 GiB | 352.77 GiB | 707.36 GiB | 2.27 Mbit/s
       2024-08 149.03 GiB | 150.89 GiB | 299.92 GiB | 961.88 kbit/s
       2024-09 160.28 GiB | 160.25 GiB | 320.53 GiB | 1.06 Mbit/s
       2024-10 166.87 GiB | 160.55 GiB | 327.42 GiB | 1.05 Mbit/s
       2024-11 25.78 GiB | 23.95 GiB | 49.73 GiB | 1.24 Mbit/s
     ------------------------+-------------+-------------+---------------
     estimated 193.68 GiB | 179.91 GiB | 373.59 GiB |

Bill

--
William Denton

Librarian, artist and licensed private investigator.
Toronto, Canada

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6

Taking some answers from a reply to a different user:

The BCM2712 SoC microcontroller has a base frequency 1,5 GhZ with 4 cores and 4 threads, but most importantly, it also supports openSSL hardware acceleration, with up to 42 times faster AES speeds.

Also, regarding the "I'll just do this at home with my static IÜ until I want to repurpose my brand new Pi", there are datacenters who will colocate your Pi, at very affordable rates.

At least there were..

All the best,
-GH

···

On Monday, November 4th, 2024 at 2:37 PM, David Goulet <dgoulet@torproject.org> wrote:

On 01 Nov (18:15:13), Keifer Bly wrote:

> Hi,
>

> So I am wondering, is a Raspberry Pi 4 a recommended device to run a tor
> relay on? In terms of traffic load, etc? Thanks.

Greetings,

For a while, Pies were not powerful enough to handle high throughput traffic
that the network needed (and still needs). RAM was also very limited (relays at
minimum need 4GB these days).

And this all gets worst when DDoS happen where the Pies of the network are the
first one to die.

With the latest versions, they are quite more powerful. But, apart from CPU and
RAM, what is massively important for a relay is uptime and reliability.

That is where a Pie on your home desk can be not so great. It can't be seen as
just a fun experiment or just "I'll do that for 6 months until I can figure out
something better to do with the Pie" also :S...

The Tor network needs relays that are powerful (better speed, better at soaking
DDoS) and more importantly reliable and trustable. And so, if you are aiming
for that with a Pie4, by all means :).

Cheers!
David

--
LVhDzrGDlICa3f1oXA8PH221hdOB1qlpD6N7G58Keww=
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7

Ok thanks all.

–Keifer

···

–Keifer

8

Thinking of using a libre computer instead.

–Keifer

···

–Keifer

9

Hey, I took a look at their boards and the AML-A311D-CC SBC looked like a great choice.

6 cores total, 4x ARM-73, 2x ARM-53 which also feature the crypto extensions.

Said crypto roviding up to 40x more speed decoding / encoding AES which is great for openssl (and by extension, thus also Tor).

Also, if you can find a datacenter willing to colocate that thing, it would be great.

The hardware is too fast for at home operations with 24 hour IP changes or slow connection speed (down OR up), it deserves to be in a proper DC.

Just my 2 cents.

-GH

···

On Saturday, November 9th, 2024 at 10:39 PM, Keifer Bly keifer.bly@gmail.com wrote:

Thinking of using a libre computer instead.

–Keifer

On Sat, Nov 9, 2024, 1:38 PM Keifer Bly <keifer.bly@gmail.com> wrote:

Ok thanks all.

–Keifer

On Thu, Nov 7, 2024, 6:43 AM Michael Wächter via tor-relays <tor-relays@lists.torproject.org> wrote:

Hi all,
I’m running a relay on a Pi 4 now for almost 2 years, almost no issues at all. Average CPU load 40 %, average bandwidth 5 MB.
Updating to a newer version of tor is a bit tricky.

Rads

Michael

Am 04.11.2024 um 12:40 schrieb jl2238— via tor-relays <tor-relays@lists.torproject.org>:

It works. My relay is running on a Raspberry Pi 4B with 4 GB RAM. Bandwith for the relay is 2 Mbit/s, CPU Load of the relay is about 20 %

Am 02.11.24 um 02:15 schrieb Keifer Bly:

Hi,

So I am wondering, is a Raspberry Pi 4 a recommended device to run a tor relay on? In terms of traffic load, etc? Thanks.

–Keifer

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