Title: Tor part 4: run a relay
       Author: Solène
       Date: 08 November 2018
       Tags: unix tor
       Description: 
       
       In this fourth Tor article, I will _quickly_ cover how to run a Tor
       relay, the
       Tor project already have a very nice and up-to-date Guide for setting a
       relay.
       Those relays are what make Tor usable, with more relay, Tor gets more
       bandwidth
       and it makes you harder to trace, because that would mean more traffic
       to
       analyze.
       
       A relay server can be an **exit node**, which will relay Tor traffic to
       the
       outside. This implies a lot of legal issues, the Tor project foundation
       offers
       to help you if your exit node gets you in trouble.
       
       Remember that being an exit node is **optional**. Most relays are not
       exit
       nodes. They will either relay traffic between relays, or become a
       **guard**
       which is an entry point to the Tor network. The guard gets the request
       over
       non-tor network and send it to the next relay of the user circuit.
       
       Running a relay requires a lot of CPU (capable of some crypto) and a
       huge
       amount of bandwidth. Running a relay requires at least a bandwidth of
       10Mb/s,
       this is a minimal requirement. If you have less, you can still run a
       bridge
       with obfs4 but I won't cover it here.
       
       When running a relay, you will be able to set a daily/weekly/monthly
       traffic
       limit, so your relay will stop relaying when it reach the quota. It's
       quiet
       useful if you don't have unmeasured bandwidth, you can also limit the
       bandwidth
       allowed to Tor.
       
       To get real-time information about your relay, the software Nyx
       (net/nyx) is a
       Tor top-like front end which show Tor CPU usage, bandwidth,
       connections, log in
       real time.
       
       [The awesome Official Tor
       guide](https://blog.torproject.org/new-guide-running-tor-relay)