Looking for rare locations for Tor relays

JohnFilch123 · January 11

@forest said: THE.Hosting

These guys are known for non-ethical practices like faking locations and having a funny routing around the world. Not recommended.

forest · January 11

@JohnFilch123 said:

@forest said: Kemerovo

I have been running this for a while now (~6 months). It is ok for the price, had a few network downtimes. Opened a ticket once at the beginning, got a response in 20 mins saying 'there was a network outage in DC' and 'no estimated timeline to fix it, issue with the router'. I think it was fixed within a few days. Other than that it is a great machine with Ryzen 9 7950x but the port is capped to 100Mb/s. However, price is very affordable.

Let me know if you want YABS or any other test from this machine.

Do you run Tor on it? What kind of bandwidth are you getting? My other VPS in Russia, which is near Kemerovo, rarely gets over 1 Mbps due to poor routing to the Tor bandwidth authorities, so they give it a low consensus weight despite it being capable of passing more traffic.

JohnFilch123 · January 11

@forest said: Do you run Tor on it?

Nope, I still looking to get into Tor running. I have globalping on this machine and a small pics gallery running https://www.files.gallery

I am usually not putting anything heavy on new servers and observing how they behave in terms of downtime, how quick the support is etc.

forest · January 11

@JohnFilch123 said:

@forest said: Do you run Tor on it?

Nope, I still looking to get into Tor running. I have globalping on this machine and a small pics gallery running https://www.files.gallery

I am usually not putting anything heavy on new servers and observing how they behave in terms of downtime, how quick the support is etc.

You should definitely get into it! A nice simple torrc like this would be all you'd need for a non-exit relay:

ExitRelay 0
ORPort 9001
Nickname WhateverNameYouWant
AccountingMax 5 TB  # assuming 5 TB/month limit
AccountingRule sum  # assuming metered in+out, other values are "in" or "out"
Sandbox 1

Then just open up TCP/9001 on your firewall and restart the Tor service and you're good to go.

JohnFilch123 · January 11

@forest said: Armenia

This one has got a funny routing.

oloke · January 11

@forest said:
I am also considering Melbicom. They have Singapore for only €5,70 EUR/month and, while it is limited to 5 TB/month traffic, it's throttled to "only" 100 Mbps, so it's effectively unmetered @ 100 Mbps, and that's a great price in such a location.

@tarisu said:

@oloke said:
hi @forest ,

I'm looking for more locations for an unmanaged VPS, with a preference for APAC.

I recently found a thread about VPS servers in Indonesia. A lot of good recommendations there and Indonesia is not a very popular country for Tor yet. However I don't think most of the hosts mentioned take crypto payments.

I also asked @bela from servergalactic a while ago about Tor relays, but they said they can't really deal with them because of high bandwidth costs in Philippines. Maybe Thailand would be more suitable, but still not sure if within your budget. They seem to take crypto via binance.

Today I got a VPS in Laos from No ACK, however the network speeds are unsuitable to run any kind of relay (i just set up globalping probe there). In any case, No ACK takes crypto (bitcoin) via BTCPay.

Readydedis is also a good one for Japan. They recently ran a promo for 10th anniversary. Unmetered 100mbps in Japan is very nice at this price. However I see you already run a relay with them. (also their ToS seems to be a bit restrictive for "anonymizers")

For Malaysia you could ask @jonbeard from Breezehost or @advinservers from Advinservers but the prices are a bit high, especially for high bandwidth VPS servers.

@forest said:

@fluffernutter said:
maybe @avsisp for Albania?

Their ToS states:

Hosting or operating Tor exit nodes, public VPN or proxy servers, or open relays is not permitted.

All traffic to and from the Tor network is forbidden due to abuse.

Which is a bit ambiguous since it seems to imply that only Tor exits are disallowed, then that Tor as a whole is. That, and being one of only two hosts I've ever come across that flat-out block connections from Tor makes me a bit hesitant.

I'd love clarification from them, since traffic to and from the Tor network, if it is exclusively through the Tor network (i.e. not an exit that bridges the Tor network to the rest of the internet) cannot bring in abuse complaints.

They allow non-exit relays without problems. I used to run a relay there for some time, however decided to shut it down recently due to frequent network issues (i think the XDP anti ddos network filters get in a way of Tor relay in my case)
Also, Albania is not that rare and even holds more Tor network consensus than Lithuania for example. (how much of that is just fake geo is a whole another story...)

Best luck with your search and please let me know once you find something interesting

You forgot Tarisu sir.

What is your bandwidth overage policy? I don't need more than 100 Mbps burst, but 4 TB/month is rather limiting. If I reduce disk size from 30 to 5 GB, and reduce RAM from 2 to 1.5 GB, can I have unmetered bandwidth at 100 Mbps (instead of 10 Gbps) at the cheap (1 vCPU) plan?

I run a relay on Tarisu, but the 4TB is indeed limiting. It runs out around 20th day of the month in my case.
I set up manual bandwidth accounting on Tor to not run out of the 4TB allocated (in+out counts so effectively 2TB for Tor):

AccountingMax 1750 GB
AccountingStart month 1 10:00

From what I've heard, the VPS would get suspended if it exceeded the traffic, so I'm cautious.

@tarisu is great but maybe not for this particular use-case, from what I heard bandwidth is expensive for them so there's really no option to get more.

forest · January 11

@oloke said:

@forest said:
I am also considering Melbicom. They have Singapore for only €5,70 EUR/month and, while it is limited to 5 TB/month traffic, it's throttled to "only" 100 Mbps, so it's effectively unmetered @ 100 Mbps, and that's a great price in such a location.

@tarisu said:

@oloke said:
hi @forest ,

I'm looking for more locations for an unmanaged VPS, with a preference for APAC.

I recently found a thread about VPS servers in Indonesia. A lot of good recommendations there and Indonesia is not a very popular country for Tor yet. However I don't think most of the hosts mentioned take crypto payments.

I also asked @bela from servergalactic a while ago about Tor relays, but they said they can't really deal with them because of high bandwidth costs in Philippines. Maybe Thailand would be more suitable, but still not sure if within your budget. They seem to take crypto via binance.

Today I got a VPS in Laos from No ACK, however the network speeds are unsuitable to run any kind of relay (i just set up globalping probe there). In any case, No ACK takes crypto (bitcoin) via BTCPay.

Readydedis is also a good one for Japan. They recently ran a promo for 10th anniversary. Unmetered 100mbps in Japan is very nice at this price. However I see you already run a relay with them. (also their ToS seems to be a bit restrictive for "anonymizers")

For Malaysia you could ask @jonbeard from Breezehost or @advinservers from Advinservers but the prices are a bit high, especially for high bandwidth VPS servers.

@forest said:

@fluffernutter said:
maybe @avsisp for Albania?

Their ToS states:

Hosting or operating Tor exit nodes, public VPN or proxy servers, or open relays is not permitted.

All traffic to and from the Tor network is forbidden due to abuse.

Which is a bit ambiguous since it seems to imply that only Tor exits are disallowed, then that Tor as a whole is. That, and being one of only two hosts I've ever come across that flat-out block connections from Tor makes me a bit hesitant.

I'd love clarification from them, since traffic to and from the Tor network, if it is exclusively through the Tor network (i.e. not an exit that bridges the Tor network to the rest of the internet) cannot bring in abuse complaints.

They allow non-exit relays without problems. I used to run a relay there for some time, however decided to shut it down recently due to frequent network issues (i think the XDP anti ddos network filters get in a way of Tor relay in my case)
Also, Albania is not that rare and even holds more Tor network consensus than Lithuania for example. (how much of that is just fake geo is a whole another story...)

Best luck with your search and please let me know once you find something interesting

You forgot Tarisu sir.

What is your bandwidth overage policy? I don't need more than 100 Mbps burst, but 4 TB/month is rather limiting. If I reduce disk size from 30 to 5 GB, and reduce RAM from 2 to 1.5 GB, can I have unmetered bandwidth at 100 Mbps (instead of 10 Gbps) at the cheap (1 vCPU) plan?

I run a relay on Tarisu, but the 4TB is indeed limiting. It runs out around 20th day of the month in my case.
I set up manual bandwidth accounting on Tor to not run out of the 4TB allocated (in+out counts so effectively 2TB for Tor):
AccountingMax 1750 GB
AccountingStart month 1 10:00
From what I've heard, the VPS would get suspended if it exceeded the traffic, so I'm cautious.

@tarisu is great but maybe not for this particular use-case, from what I heard bandwidth is expensive for them so there's really no option to get more.

Set AccountingRule sum and it will automatically account in+out.

Since I specified "15 TB/month bandwidth @ 40 Mbps" or "unmetered @ 100 Mbps" in my OP, hopefully @tarisu is willing to provide a custom offer if I'm willing to reduce the other specs on the relay.

tarisu · January 11

@forest said:
@oloke said:

@forest said:
I am also considering Melbicom. They have Singapore for only €5,70 EUR/month and, while it is limited to 5 TB/month traffic, it's throttled to "only" 100 Mbps, so it's effectively unmetered @ 100 Mbps, and that's a great price in such a location.

@tarisu said:

@oloke said:
hi @forest ,

I'm looking for more locations for an unmanaged VPS, with a preference for APAC.

I recently found a thread about VPS servers in Indonesia. A lot of good recommendations there and Indonesia is not a very popular country for Tor yet. However I don't think most of the hosts mentioned take crypto payments.

I also asked @bela from servergalactic a while ago about Tor relays, but they said they can't really deal with them because of high bandwidth costs in Philippines. Maybe Thailand would be more suitable, but still not sure if within your budget. They seem to take crypto via binance.

Today I got a VPS in Laos from No ACK, however the network speeds are unsuitable to run any kind of relay (i just set up globalping probe there). In any case, No ACK takes crypto (bitcoin) via BTCPay.

Readydedis is also a good one for Japan. They recently ran a promo for 10th anniversary. Unmetered 100mbps in Japan is very nice at this price. However I see you already run a relay with them. (also their ToS seems to be a bit restrictive for "anonymizers")

For Malaysia you could ask @jonbeard from Breezehost or @advinservers from Advinservers but the prices are a bit high, especially for high bandwidth VPS servers.

@forest said:

@fluffernutter said:
maybe @avsisp for Albania?

Their ToS states:

Hosting or operating Tor exit nodes, public VPN or proxy servers, or open relays is not permitted.

All traffic to and from the Tor network is forbidden due to abuse.

Which is a bit ambiguous since it seems to imply that only Tor exits are disallowed, then that Tor as a whole is. That, and being one of only two hosts I've ever come across that flat-out block connections from Tor makes me a bit hesitant.

I'd love clarification from them, since traffic to and from the Tor network, if it is exclusively through the Tor network (i.e. not an exit that bridges the Tor network to the rest of the internet) cannot bring in abuse complaints.

They allow non-exit relays without problems. I used to run a relay there for some time, however decided to shut it down recently due to frequent network issues (i think the XDP anti ddos network filters get in a way of Tor relay in my case)
Also, Albania is not that rare and even holds more Tor network consensus than Lithuania for example. (how much of that is just fake geo is a whole another story...)

Best luck with your search and please let me know once you find something interesting

You forgot Tarisu sir.

What is your bandwidth overage policy? I don't need more than 100 Mbps burst, but 4 TB/month is rather limiting. If I reduce disk size from 30 to 5 GB, and reduce RAM from 2 to 1.5 GB, can I have unmetered bandwidth at 100 Mbps (instead of 10 Gbps) at the cheap (1 vCPU) plan?

I run a relay on Tarisu, but the 4TB is indeed limiting. It runs out around 20th day of the month in my case.
I set up manual bandwidth accounting on Tor to not run out of the 4TB allocated (in+out counts so effectively 2TB for Tor):
AccountingMax 1750 GB
AccountingStart month 1 10:00
From what I've heard, the VPS would get suspended if it exceeded the traffic, so I'm cautious.

@tarisu is great but maybe not for this particular use-case, from what I heard bandwidth is expensive for them so there's really no option to get more.
Set AccountingRule sum and it will automatically account in+out.

Since I specified "15 TB/month bandwidth @ 40 Mbps" or "unmetered @ 100 Mbps" in my OP, hopefully @tarisu is willing to provide a custom offer if I'm willing to reduce the other specs on the relay.

Mr Tarisu does not know what to do

forest · January 11

@tarisu said:
@forest said:
@oloke said:

@forest said:
I am also considering Melbicom. They have Singapore for only €5,70 EUR/month and, while it is limited to 5 TB/month traffic, it's throttled to "only" 100 Mbps, so it's effectively unmetered @ 100 Mbps, and that's a great price in such a location.

@tarisu said:

@oloke said:
hi @forest ,

I'm looking for more locations for an unmanaged VPS, with a preference for APAC.

I recently found a thread about VPS servers in Indonesia. A lot of good recommendations there and Indonesia is not a very popular country for Tor yet. However I don't think most of the hosts mentioned take crypto payments.

I also asked @bela from servergalactic a while ago about Tor relays, but they said they can't really deal with them because of high bandwidth costs in Philippines. Maybe Thailand would be more suitable, but still not sure if within your budget. They seem to take crypto via binance.

Today I got a VPS in Laos from No ACK, however the network speeds are unsuitable to run any kind of relay (i just set up globalping probe there). In any case, No ACK takes crypto (bitcoin) via BTCPay.

Readydedis is also a good one for Japan. They recently ran a promo for 10th anniversary. Unmetered 100mbps in Japan is very nice at this price. However I see you already run a relay with them. (also their ToS seems to be a bit restrictive for "anonymizers")

For Malaysia you could ask @jonbeard from Breezehost or @advinservers from Advinservers but the prices are a bit high, especially for high bandwidth VPS servers.

@forest said:

@fluffernutter said:
maybe @avsisp for Albania?

Their ToS states:

Hosting or operating Tor exit nodes, public VPN or proxy servers, or open relays is not permitted.

All traffic to and from the Tor network is forbidden due to abuse.

Which is a bit ambiguous since it seems to imply that only Tor exits are disallowed, then that Tor as a whole is. That, and being one of only two hosts I've ever come across that flat-out block connections from Tor makes me a bit hesitant.

I'd love clarification from them, since traffic to and from the Tor network, if it is exclusively through the Tor network (i.e. not an exit that bridges the Tor network to the rest of the internet) cannot bring in abuse complaints.

They allow non-exit relays without problems. I used to run a relay there for some time, however decided to shut it down recently due to frequent network issues (i think the XDP anti ddos network filters get in a way of Tor relay in my case)
Also, Albania is not that rare and even holds more Tor network consensus than Lithuania for example. (how much of that is just fake geo is a whole another story...)

Best luck with your search and please let me know once you find something interesting

You forgot Tarisu sir.

What is your bandwidth overage policy? I don't need more than 100 Mbps burst, but 4 TB/month is rather limiting. If I reduce disk size from 30 to 5 GB, and reduce RAM from 2 to 1.5 GB, can I have unmetered bandwidth at 100 Mbps (instead of 10 Gbps) at the cheap (1 vCPU) plan?

I run a relay on Tarisu, but the 4TB is indeed limiting. It runs out around 20th day of the month in my case.
I set up manual bandwidth accounting on Tor to not run out of the 4TB allocated (in+out counts so effectively 2TB for Tor):
AccountingMax 1750 GB
AccountingStart month 1 10:00
From what I've heard, the VPS would get suspended if it exceeded the traffic, so I'm cautious.

@tarisu is great but maybe not for this particular use-case, from what I heard bandwidth is expensive for them so there's really no option to get more.
Set AccountingRule sum and it will automatically account in+out.

Since I specified "15 TB/month bandwidth @ 40 Mbps" or "unmetered @ 100 Mbps" in my OP, hopefully @tarisu is willing to provide a custom offer if I'm willing to reduce the other specs on the relay.
Mr Tarisu does not know what to do

You can give me a custom offer for unmetered traffic at 100 Mbps.

How about:

1 vCPU
1.5 GB RAM
5 GB SSD
unmetered traffic @ 80 Mbps
$35/year (I can pay annually)

That's costs more than VPS-TR-1. Or if the specs are still too high, I can go as low as 40 Mbps and 1 GB RAM!

sh97 · January 11

@forest you could consider vps.tc for Turkey - I used them for a year. It comes with true unmetered, but they seem a bit shady, and I have many downtimes, sometimes even lasting days or weeks.

I paid a little over $7 for a year for 1C/2G/40GB/Unmetered 1G

Now their cheapest plan is $2/m for the same specs.

Now I wouldn't recommend it, but you can consider them if you don't find anything else.

forest · January 11

@sh97 said:
@forest you could consider vps.tc for Turkey - I used them for a year. It comes with true unmetered, but they seem a bit shady, and I have many downtimes, sometimes even lasting days or weeks.

I paid a little over $7 for a year for 1C/2G/40GB/Unmetered 1G

Now their cheapest plan is $2/m for the same specs.

Now I wouldn't recommend it, but you can consider them if you don't find anything else.

I actually run a relay with them! https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/531F58F1A9431F9C46A79FE6847568FFEEF637B5

They have insanely high CPU steal and their routing is suboptimal, but otherwise they aren't too bad.

forest · January 12

@JohnFilch123 said:

@forest said: THE.Hosting

These guys are known for non-ethical practices like faking locations and having a funny routing around the world. Not recommended.

I'll check out their looking glass and see what locations appear legit. Their pricing is competitive and they seem to have a lot of "bulletproof" peers, which can be good for exit relays.

The only issue I have is a fundamentally ethical one: I disagree with their demand of KYC for their lowest-price plans. Not just because it keeps me out (it doesn't; I could deepfake it well enough), but because I don't like any company that requires KYC.

JohnFilch123 · January 12

@forest said: I'll check out their looking glass and see what locations appear legit

This would be very interesting!

jonbeard · January 16

@forest said:

@oloke said:
Today I got a VPS in Laos from No ACK, however the network speeds are unsuitable to run any kind of relay (i just set up globalping probe there). In any case, No ACK takes crypto (bitcoin) via BTCPay.

10 Mbps isn't too bad, since some of my servers (like the one in Nigeria) utilize less simply because of the low consensus weight of those countries no matter how fast their connections are, but your YABS makes it look like it can't even achieve a real 10. I suppose I could ask them (I already have one of their VPSes in Sweden and it's running strong as an exit).

Readydedis is also a good one for Japan. They recently ran a promo for 10th anniversary. Unmetered 100mbps in Japan is very nice at this price. However I see you already run a relay with them. (also their ToS seems to be a bit restrictive for "anonymizers")

I think that's the special I bought from! I'm not getting much speed with Tor yet (about 0.5 Mbps), but that could be because it's still ramping up. Worst-case, I'll add an I2P router to it. I believe they actually used some cryptocurrency payment gateway that required strict KYC, but after making a request in a support ticket, they gave me an address to send directly to, so that worked out.

For Malaysia you could ask @jonbeard from Breezehost or @advinservers from Advinservers but the prices are a bit high, especially for high bandwidth VPS servers.

One of my US exit nodes is hosted on Advin! They've been out of stock of their Malaysia location for a while though, and quoted a custom 100 Mbps unmetered plan as something like $30/month, otherwise the bandwidth is too restrictive as you say. I'll look into Breezehost!

They allow non-exit relays without problems. I used to run a relay there for some time, however decided to shut it down recently due to frequent network issues (i think the XDP anti ddos network filters get in a way of Tor relay in my case)

If they stop using Cloudflare to straight-up block Tor connections, I'll give them a try.

Also, Albania is not that rare and even holds more Tor network consensus than Lithuania for example. (how much of that is just fake geo is a whole another story...)

I guess a few globalping probes would be able to find out pretty easily. I can buy a cheap Albanian host ($2/month if prepaying for 5 years, something like $4/month if paying a month at a time) with JustHost, but I already have a few relays from them and plan to add a few more, and don't want my "portfolio" to be too heavy on any one AS.

Best luck with your search and please let me know once you find something interesting

Will do!

A little late to the party here, but I am happy to help however we can. We are a Globalping Sponsor, and happy to assist any way we can. Shoot me a DM if you still need help sourcing some servers, and I would be happy to be of assistance.

stefeman · January 16

Grab your dick and double click for tor tor tor.

forest · February 10

Turns out 4VPS (unsurprisingly) fakes a number of locations. Their Albania and Denmark VPSes are actually in Amsterdam. They refunded me (in credits) for their promo Russia VPS due to the censorship issues. I'm going to buy a VPS from them in Lithuania or Hong Kong instead.

I'll also be getting a VPS from another provider in Macedonia.

@forest said: They have insanely high CPU steal and their routing is suboptimal, but otherwise they aren't too bad.

CPU steal was 30%. I asked them if they could move me to another node because of the high steal. They did. It is now over 50%. God dammit. If I didn't disable memory ballooning, the system would be unusable.

concept · February 10

@forest said:
Their Albania and Denmark VPSes are actually in Amsterdam.

The Albania servers are downstream of Albahost dedis. They are known to have servers across EU but are all geolocated in Albania. https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/196370/review-after-a-whole-year-of-using-albahosts-services

I think what happened with Denmark is they got shut down by their danish provider due to sanctions but are still using the IPs for other server locations.

forest · February 10

@concept said:

@forest said:
Their Albania and Denmark VPSes are actually in Amsterdam.

The Albania servers are downstream of Albahost dedis. They are known to have servers across EU but are all geolocated in Albania. https://lowendtalk.com/discussion/196370/review-after-a-whole-year-of-using-albahosts-services

I think what happened with Denmark is they got shut down by their danish provider due to sanctions but are still using the IPs for other server locations.

That makes sense. What surprised me was how well-connected their Albanian servers were, as well-connected as a decent Netherlands server. So I checked with IPInfo and, sure enough, they were in Amsterdam.

The others seem to be legitimate from what I can tell. A bit pricey as far as LET is concerned, but they all seem to be unmetered bandwidth, and unmetered bandwidth in locations like Armenia, Hong Kong, UAE, and Australia is quite nice.

forest · March 15

I'm finding some very interesting locations with https://btc-vps.com/, if anyone else wants to check them out. There are, of course, a lot of shit resellers, but there are some hosts there with rare locations that I have not seen here.

forest · April 13

Well this was odd... I have/had a non-exit relay with C1V in Italy (despite all the complaints I've read here about their reliability, they're good enough for me). I just got a notification that it was suspended for the reason "tor node". I opened a ticket and clarified that it is not an exit and that there is no risk of abuse complaints, and almost immediately I got a notification that the ticket was closed without a reply. I was pissed, but then I realized the VPS was unsuspended. Huh.

rpqu · April 13

@forest said:
I was pissed, but then I realized the VPS was unsuspended. Huh.

Crisis reverted

ailice · April 13

@oloke said:
I recently found a thread about VPS servers in Indonesia. A lot of good recommendations there and Indonesia is not a very popular country for Tor yet. However I don't think most of the hosts mentioned take crypto payments.

That Illegal to paid with cryptocurrency on indonesia, but you still can using Virtual CC and most indonesia hosting have lenient data check on their WHMCS (just make sure your mail was correct!).

Also international port was truly expensive, which mostly time you cant using it beyond 50Mbps on most VPS provider.

Otherwise mostly of them fine with tor exit node.

forest · April 13

@ailice said: That Illegal to paid with cryptocurrency on indonesia

Perhaps so, but I could pay a company in cryptocurrency if the company is not Indonesian but has servers there.

@ailice said: Also international port was truly expensive, which mostly time you cant using it beyond 50Mbps on most VPS provider.

50 Mbps, if it's unmetered, would be plenty for me.

JohnFilch123 · April 13

@forest said: if it's unmetered

Highly unlikely. Nata offers 5TB, which is kinda low for tor but at least something. I guess if you throttle the port, it will be better than nothing.

forest · April 13

@JohnFilch123 said:

@forest said: if it's unmetered

Highly unlikely. Nata offers 5TB, which is kinda low for tor but at least something. I guess if you throttle the port, it will be better than nothing.

5 TB is definitely better than nothing, especially there. I can set Tor to hibernate once it approaches 5 TB and reset at the end of the month using its built-in bandwidth accounting mode.

mans_xd · April 13

i have watched Ichigo Mashimaro and it's ridiculous random and that what make its fun

forest · April 13

@mans_xd said:
i have watched Ichigo Mashimaro and it's ridiculous random and that what make its fun

Nothing is a better combination than cute and silly random.

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