What happens when you use an exit relay on Tor?
The services Tor clients are connecting to (website, chat service, email provider, etc) will see the IP address of the exit relay instead of the real IP address of the Tor user. Exit relays have the greatest legal exposure and liability of all the relays.
Is the IP address of a Tor relay public?
The design of the Tor network means that the IP address of Tor relays is public. However, one of the ways Tor can be blocked by governments or ISPs is by blocklisting the IP addresses of these public Tor nodes.
Is there a hard uptime requirement for a Tor relay?
Tor has no hard uptime requirement but if your relay is not running for more than 2 hours a day its usefulness is limited. Ideally the relay runs on a server which runs 24/7. Reboots and tor daemon restarts are fine. For security reasons, Tor relays should not downgrade their tor version from a supported to an unsupported version of tor.
Can a middle relay be a guard or an exit?
A middle relay is neither a guard nor an exit, but acts as the second hop between the two. To become a guard, a relay has to be stable and fast (at least 2MByte/s) otherwise it will remain a middle relay.
What are the similarities between Tor and I2P?
On the surface, I2P appears to provide many of the same benefits that Tor does. Both allow anonymous access to online content, both make use of a peer-to-peer-like routing structure, and both operate using layered encryption. However, I2P was designed from the ground up to provide a different set of benefits.
What are the different types of nodes in Tor?
The Tor network is comprised of three different types of nodes: directory servers, exit points (also referred to as exit relays), and internal relays. When you connect to Tor, the first thing your client does is acquire a current list of relays from one of the trusted directory servers.
Where can I find the Tor Bridge Information?
The normal relay nodes are listed in the main Tor directory, and the connections to them can be easily identified and blocked by censors. The Tor bridge information is defined in the profile file of Firefox, so you can display it by entering “about:config” in the address bar of Tor Browser, as shown in Figure 1.
How to force Tor browser to use specific exit nodes?
There is a need to force Tor Browser to use specific exit node/s explicitly. By default, Tor browser randomly chooses which exit node to use when browsing the internet. In some cases, you may need to use specific exit node/s when visiting certain website/s.