[tor-relays] Seeking Advice on Running a Tor Exit Node in India

Mailing Lists tor-relays
1

Dear Tor Operators,

I hope this message finds you well.

I am planning to set up a Tor exit node and would like to seek your valuable advice and guidance before proceeding. Specifically, I want to understand the following:

  1. What are the essential technical and operational considerations I should be aware of before running an exit node?

  2. Are there best practices or configurations you recommend to ensure the node runs securely and efficiently?

  3. What kind of bandwidth allocation is ideal? I am considering allocating around 30-40 Mbps on my internet connection—would this be sufficient or optimal?

  4. Could you please share insights on the legal responsibilities and potential risks involved with operating a Tor exit node in India?

  5. Are there any specific resources, communities, or contacts you recommend I engage with for ongoing support?

  6. (most importantly) what hardware accelerations should my device support?? is it fine if i run it on raspberry pi 5 or would it need a modern x86 CPU?

I appreciate any advice or resources you can share. I am eager to contribute responsibly and effectively to the Tor network.

Thank you very much for your time and help.

Best regards,
Pradnyesh
Email: rustedusted@proton.me
Location: Pune, India

2

I'm not Indian, but I've got some experience residing and working there.
(Mumbai and Bangalore mainly).

This is true for anywhere: if your plan is to run an exit node,
communicate this with your internet service provider first if they're
not on the Good ISPs list.

Get their blessing on it, and try to address whatever concerns they may
have. If it turns out that your particular ISP has never had a customer
run a tor exit node before, you're kind of an ambassador for the rest of
us.

You will note there aren't any entries from India on this list. It
would be nice to have one or two or three there but India is a tough
legal space. I'd love to be wrong, but probably with the way things are
you will have a hard time finding an ISP who can & will take the heat
for tor exit nodes in India.

You will probably have to run a tight exit policy (only forwarding
80/443 to start) if you get that blessing.

If it's a big operator (ie Reliance) I'm sure somebody has tried running
an exit before, and it didn't work out. Try searching, there may be
notes on that. Therefore it's essential to reach out to your ISP before
even trying to run one for 5 minutes.

In India, IMO if you got the blessing, you should definitely set up
DirPortFrontPage (set up a webpage on your IP that explains what you're
doing and your cooperation with the ISP on it). That should give you a
more defensible position if the police get involved with you later.

Not trying to scare you, but if we're ever going to succeed in India
this probably has to be as cooperative as it can possibly get. That
said, my perspective might be years out of date...

Finally read these links if you haven't already, and join #tor-relays on
IRC to hang out with people who would be more helpful than myself.

Regardless of the outcome, please share your experience(s) with this
list so that others that come after you can benefit.

Thanks for working on this!

fjord

···

On Fri May 16, 2025 at 9:10 AM PDT, RUSTEDUSTED via tor-relays wrote:

Could you please share insights on the legal responsibilities and
potential risks involved with operating a Tor exit node in India?

_______________________________________________
tor-relays mailing list -- tor-relays@lists.torproject.org
To unsubscribe send an email to tor-relays-leave@lists.torproject.org

3

Tor exit nodes are quickly blacklisted. Even middlemen without exit
can be blacklisted too. Where do you plan to run it? You do not want to
put it behind your home connection.

I do what most people do: I rent a tiny VPS for ~ $1 / month
1 vCPU and 1 - 1.5 GB of RAM is enough to run TOR.

My American VPS has a 4 TB monthly throughput limit, so I adjusted
RelayBandwidthRate in torrc
4 TB / 31 days / 86400 s = 1493 KB/s
I have to take a few other things into account, like the OS updates, OS
e-mails alerts... All this is small and I cannot estimate it precisely
so I reduced the limit to stay on the safe side.

/etc/tor/torrc
...
## Define these to limit how much relayed traffic you will allow. Your
## own traffic is still unthrottled. Note that RelayBandwidthRate must
## be at least 20 KB.
## Note that units for these config options are bytes per second, not bits
## per second, and that prefixes are binary prefixes, i.e. 2^10, 2^20, etc.
#RelayBandwidthRate 100 KB # Throttle traffic to 100KB/s (800Kbps)
#RelayBandwidthBurst 200 KB # But allow bursts up to 200KB/s (1600Kbps)

# 1493KB max
RelayBandwidthRate 1400 KB
RelayBandwidthBurst 3000 KB

## Use these to restrict the maximum traffic per day, week, or month.
## Note that this threshold applies separately to sent and received bytes,
## not to their sum: setting "4 GB" may allow up to 8 GB total before
## hibernating.

···

On Fri, 16 May 2025 16:10:51 +0000 RUSTEDUSTED via tor-relays <tor-relays@lists.torproject.org> wrote:

I am planning to set up a Tor exit node

##
## Set a maximum of 4 TB each way per period.
AccountingMax 4000 GB
## Each period starts daily at midnight (AccountingMax is per day)
#AccountingStart day 00:00
## Each period starts on the 3rd of the month at 15:00 (AccountingMax
## is per month)
AccountingStart month 5 12:00
...
_______________________________________________
tor-relays mailing list -- tor-relays@lists.torproject.org
To unsubscribe send an email to tor-relays-leave@lists.torproject.org