VPS in Russia with minimal censorship for a Tor middle relay

forest · July 5

I'm looking for a VPS in Russia with minimal network censorship to run a Tor non-exit relay on (contrary to popular belief, they do exist and there are currently 45 relays in Russia). I have already tried 4vps and JustHost. The latter, while it does have some subnets that are not censored, does not let you choose which subnet you get.

Minimum requirements:

1 vCPU with AES-NI
1 GB RAM
5 GB storage (any type)
Unmetered bandwidth @ 50 Mbps or 15 TB/month
$50/year when paid annually or triennially with cryptocurrency (flexible)

If it's not certain whether or not they block the Tor network, they must have a looking glass that allows performing a traceroute to a remote destination. I would like to avoid UFO Hosting as they are the same as THE.Hosting / PQ Hosting / WorkTitans / Stark Industries, who have exported NetFlow data to the spy firm Team Cymru.

Arnold715 · July 5

host-for.net
1 CPU EPYC 7763
824MB RAM
15GB SSD
Network: 1Gbit/s 30TB/month. 1 IPv4 + IPv6 /64
DC: IXcellerate
255 RUB/month

From their support

Yes, we generally allow customers to operate TOR middle (relay) nodes on our servers in Russia, provided they are not exit nodes. TOR exit nodes are not permitted due to the high risk of abuse complaints and legal issues. As with all services, the node must not be used for illegal activities or violate our Terms of Service.

# Translated from russian:
Russia has legislation on blocking anonymizers and VPN services, and access to the Tor Project website and the Tor network itself has been repeatedly limited by Roskomnadzor.
In practice, the work of a public Tor node in a Russian data center can attract the attention of government agencies, even if the node itself is not a day off. There is no formal permission or official judicial practice that clearly confirms the legality of the operation of Tor relay.
But upon admission, we will be obliged to block.

zGato · July 5

@Arnold715 said:
host-for.net
1 CPU EPYC 7763
824MB RAM
15GB SSD
Network: 1Gbit/s 30TB/month. 1 IPv4 + IPv6 /64
DC: IXcellerate
255 RUB/month

From their support

Yes, we generally allow customers to operate TOR middle (relay) nodes on our servers in Russia, provided they are not exit nodes. TOR exit nodes are not permitted due to the high risk of abuse complaints and legal issues. As with all services, the node must not be used for illegal activities or violate our Terms of Service.

# Translated from russian:
Russia has legislation on blocking anonymizers and VPN services, and access to the Tor Project website and the Tor network itself has been repeatedly limited by Roskomnadzor.
In practice, the work of a public Tor node in a Russian data center can attract the attention of government agencies, even if the node itself is not a day off. There is no formal permission or official judicial practice that clearly confirms the legality of the operation of Tor relay.
But upon admission, we will be obliged to block.

Not sure if one would be able to host relays here. They seem to be under AS29182.
It will be a bit hit or miss, some of their upstreams are partially filtered (or not at all) but others are totally filtered.

e.g.

host_c · July 5

quote: I'm looking for a VPS in Russia with minimal network censorship...

Am I the only one that sees the irony here ?

forest · July 5

@host_c said:
quote: I'm looking for a VPS in Russia with minimal network censorship...

Am I the only one that sees the irony here ?

I felt the irony as I was writing it.

But all I need is for the Tor network to be unblocked. Not every Russian ISP blocks it, and there are a number of Tor nodes running in Russia, so it's not impossible. I just don't want another situation where I can't even do an apt update because even deb.debian.org was unreachable (whereas mail.ru and vk.ru worked fine).

host_c · July 5

@forest said:

@host_c said:
quote: I'm looking for a VPS in Russia with minimal network censorship...

Am I the only one that sees the irony here ?

I felt the irony as I was writing it.

But all I need is for the Tor network to be unblocked. Not every Russian ISP blocks it, and there are a number of Tor nodes running in Russia, so it's not impossible. I just don't want another situation where I can't even do an apt update because deb.debian.org was unreachable (whereas mail.ru and vk.ru worked fine).

Sorry brother, I did not want to be an ass, but it looked to good not to reply to it.

You made my day so much better.

Happy Hunting !

forest · July 5

@host_c said:

@forest said:

@host_c said:
quote: I'm looking for a VPS in Russia with minimal network censorship...

Am I the only one that sees the irony here ?

I felt the irony as I was writing it.

But all I need is for the Tor network to be unblocked. Not every Russian ISP blocks it, and there are a number of Tor nodes running in Russia, so it's not impossible. I just don't want another situation where I can't even do an apt update because deb.debian.org was unreachable (whereas mail.ru and vk.ru worked fine).

Sorry brother, I did not want to be an ass, but it looked to good not to reply to it.

You made my day so much better.

Happy Hunting !

Thanks!

But yes, minimal by Russian standards is what I meant.

Arirang · July 5

Just out of curiosity, does running a Tor relay generate any income, or is it just something you do as a hobby?

zGato · July 5

@forest btw, a simple looking glass won't work to check if it's censored or not. RU doesn't seem to outright block IPs anymore, they just do filtering and let ICMP and TCP handshake flow just fine, until sending data.

e.g.

i'm preparing a PM to you with a few providers that are not filtered. Not really publishing a list here for obvious reasons. But regardless, it's extremely difficult to find a provider with all your requirements.

totally_not_banned · July 5

@Arirang said:
Just out of curiosity, does running a Tor relay generate any income, or is it just something you do as a hobby?

With a relay there's probably not even a theoretical chance. If it was an exit you would at least be able to log unencrypted traffic and do shady shit to monetize whatever valuable information you find but with a relay there's nothing unencrypted passing through your interfaces.

yoursunny · July 5

@Arirang said:
Just out of curiosity, does running a Tor relay generate any income, or is it just something you do as a hobby?

Your first relay earns a free shirt.
@forest didn’t claim shirt because he’s reluctant to reveal his address.
This suggests that he works for the state department.
After he buys 51% of the relays, he’ll control the network and monitor all the traffic.

whynotlearn · July 5

@yoursunny said:

Your first relay earns a free shirt.

@forest didn’t claim shirt because he’s reluctant to reveal his address.
This suggests that he works for the state department.
After he buys 51% of the relays, he’ll control the network and monitor all the traffic.

Forest (CIA) after buying up 51% of the relays:

oloke · July 5

@Arirang said:
Just out of curiosity, does running a Tor relay generate any income, or is it just something you do as a hobby?

It does not generate any income.

You may receive a swag package which is a T-shirt and couple Tor stickers. And of course you get the benefits of using free, secure, decentralized network with nodes ran by volunteers.

rm_ · July 5

Residential ISPs in Russia block all TCP/UDP to all Tor middle relays, since their list is public by design. And literally for years after they don't even run a relay anymore. So the next customer getting your VPS IP will have a ton of fun with that. Not that I discourage you, no.

forest · July 5

@Arirang said:
Just out of curiosity, does running a Tor relay generate any income, or is it just something you do as a hobby?

In theory, you can ask for donations for people to help support you while running relays, but it'll never be enough to generate a net income. At best, you can find someone to sponsor your relays and you'll almost break even, but that's hard.

I run relays out of my own pocket because I want to support the network.

@rm_ said:
Residential ISPs in Russia block all TCP/UDP to all Tor middle relays, since their list is public by design. And literally for years after they don't even run a relay anymore. So the next customer getting your VPS IP will have a ton of fun with that. Not that I discourage you, no.

It's funny that they'd block UDP, since Tor doesn't even use it. I guess they're overeager!

William · July 5

@forest said: It's funny that they'd block UDP, since Tor doesn't even use it. I guess they're overeager!

More likely the default settig in whatever software they use is "UDP/TCP" and not one specific. But still funny thougt.

ValdikSS · July 8

I'm looking for a VPS in Russia with minimal network censorship to run a Tor non-exit relay on (contrary to popular belief, they do exist and there are currently 45 relays in Russia)

These relays usually use some kind of an anti-censorship hack (software), OR are running on a provider which have direct connectivity with many other providers, avoiding the (transit) censorship.

For example, VEESP provides servers in RU for which censorship does not apply towards many destinations, but far from all of them. They don't sell new RU servers anymore.

In general, almost 100% of transit traffic is censored in RU in one way or another.

https://ntc.party/t/list-of-vpsdedicated-server-network-censorship-in-russia/4867/12

zGato · July 8

@ValdikSS said:

I'm looking for a VPS in Russia with minimal network censorship to run a Tor non-exit relay on (contrary to popular belief, they do exist and there are currently 45 relays in Russia)

For example, VEESP provides servers in RU for which censorship does not apply towards many destinations, but far from all of them. They don't sell new RU servers anymore.

I've yet to see anything blocked in VEESP's network. I can access literally everything I've tried.

ValdikSS · July 8

@zGato said: I've yet to see anything blocked in VEESP's network. I can access literally everything I've tried.

curl telegram.org -4 -v

zGato · July 8

@ValdikSS said:

@zGato said: I've yet to see anything blocked in VEESP's network. I can access literally everything I've tried.

curl telegram.org -4 -v

root@ru9:~# curl telegram.org -4 -v
*   Trying 149.154.167.99:80...
* Connected to telegram.org (149.154.167.99) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: telegram.org
> User-Agent: curl/7.88.1
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 302 Found
< Server: nginx/1.30.1
< Date: Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:26:33 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
< Content-Length: 0
< Connection: keep-alive
< Pragma: no-cache
< Cache-control: no-store
< Location: https://telegram.org/
<
* Connection #0 to host telegram.org left intact

v4: https://globalping.io/?measurement=2yOkC3k1vBS2yIDMt00120iwK
v6: https://globalping.io/?measurement=2y39esHx7a1GAMtDE00120iwL

As far as I've seen, IPv6 is less censored.

ValdikSS · July 8

@zGato not reachable from any RU VEESP machines for me. Are your machine in RU? VEESP provides also other locations.

You might be lucky to balance to another upstream. As far as I understand, they use source IP hashing.

zGato · July 8

@ValdikSS said:
@zGato not reachable from any RU VEESP machines for me. Are your machine in RU? VEESP provides also other locations.

You might be lucky to balance to another upstream. As far as I understand, they use source IP hashing.

I use a reseller but they solely upstream to VEESP. Yes, it's in SPB.

vinhais · July 8

It seems to work well for various destinations and then there PhotonVPS, but the bandwidth is absurdly low

https://lg.svo.psychz.net/

rm_ · July 8

@zGato said: I've yet to see anything blocked in VEESP's network. I can access literally everything I've tried.

https://dpaste.com/GFTDH32N4

Of these only 2 VPN sites are blocked on Veesp SPB. So it is indeed remarkably open.

forest · July 9

@rm_ said:

@zGato said: I've yet to see anything blocked in VEESP's network. I can access literally everything I've tried.

https://dpaste.com/GFTDH32N4

Of these only 2 VPN sites are blocked on Veesp SPB. So it is indeed remarkably open.

Do you think you could check this for me:

for orport in 216.218.219.41:443 204.13.164.118:443 193.23.244.244:443 66.111.2.131:9001 45.66.35.11:443 217.196.147.77:443 171.25.193.9:80 128.31.0.39:9201 131.188.40.189:443 199.58.81.140:443; do
    IFS=: read ip port <<< $orport
    nc -w 5 -z $ip $port || traceroute -AT -p $port $ip
done

rpqu · July 9

@forest GLWDDoS

rm_ · July 9

@forest said: Do you think you could check this for me

2 failed. https://dpaste.com/C7N9K5QE5

forest · July 9

@rm_ said:

@forest said: Do you think you could check this for me

2 failed. https://dpaste.com/C7N9K5QE5

Interesting. It looks like one failed the netcat due to the aggressive timeout but the TCP traceroute to the same port succeeded, and the other one only failed after the packets entered Germany (AS680) which indicates that any blocking is not the fault of Russia. That's good news and means all of the Tor directory authorities are uncensored by VEESP and its upstreams, even if one of them is unreachable for other reasons.

ValdikSS · July 9

@forest said: It looks like one failed the netcat due to the aggressive timeout but the TCP traceroute to the same port succeeded

Most of the censorship is performed on TLS level, after ClientHello. You won't get any proper results with just TCP test.

Use https://github.com/ValdikSS/tor-relay-scanner for example, with -s option, it not only connects over TLS but also simulates Tor handshake multiple times (because it was common to block the connection after 16-20 KB of data previously).

VEESP network is indeed pretty open, almost one of its kind. On the majority of residential connections, for example, none (zero) of Tor relays are reachable.

Fourplex · July 9

+1 for Veesp.

I know someone who ran a Tor middle relay for a month on there for the kicks and it worked fine. I however wouldn't recommend Russian VPSes for Tor relays.

I also ran an exit there when it was vStoike in 2015. Although they changed their policies since then, presumably due to Putin's internet crackdowns.

Veesp is a great Russian VPS host. However, if you want to run a Tor relay you're better off in Ukraine, Romania, Latvia or anywhere else in Eastern Europe or the CIS.

forest · July 9

@Fourplex said: However, if you want to run a Tor relay you're better off in Ukraine, Romania, Latvia or anywhere else in Eastern Europe or the CIS.

I actually run 48 relays (including two exits in Romania), and I know Russia is suboptimal for relays but I value Tor network diversity the most, particularly diversity of jurisdictions. It's just a location I don't yet have a relay in, so I want one! :P

I'll look into VEESP again. Last time I tried, they flagged my IP as fraudulent and thought I was a particular person trying to come back after getting terminated. Perhaps I can explain to them. If I can, then I can get a Russian and a Latvian VPS.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

VPS in Russia with minimal censorship for a Tor middle relay

Comments

From their support

From their support

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Categories

In this Discussion

VPS in Russia with minimal censorship for a Tor middle relay

Comments

From their support

From their support