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Mozilla Dusts Off Old Servers, Lights Up Tor Relays
TechCurmudgeon writes According to The Register, "Mozilla has given the Tor network a capacity kick with the launch of 14 relays that will help distribute user traffic. Engineers working under the Foundation's Polaris Project inked in November pulled Mozilla's spare and decommissioned hardware out of the cupboard for dedicated use in the Tor network. It included a pair of Juniper EX4200 switches and three HP SL170zG6 (48GB ram, 2*Xeon L5640, 2*1Gbps NIC) servers, along with a dedicated existing IP transit provider (2 X 10Gbps). French Mozilla engineer Arzhel Younsi (@xionoxfr) said its network was designed to fall no lower than half of its network capacity in the event of maintenance or failure. The Polaris initiative was a effort of Mozilla, the Tor Project and the Centre for Democracy and Technology to help build more privacy controls into technology."
Honestly, lately I find Firefox to be more of a memory pig than Chrome ... as of the last update to Firefox grows to using 2GB of RAM after a few hours, instead of staying under 1GB after several days.
Because every developer apparently feels that all of my memory is there for just them.
Yeah, Mozilla, I'm looking at you guys -- that's just sloppy.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
It should be noted that those are relays, which transit data inside the tor network, not exit nodes (which provide exit points to the general network and can be a large risk for their operator should any illegal content be accessed). Relays still help with the general obfuscation of the network as well as for hidden services, though.
Apparently, Mozilla is considering eventually deploying exit nodes as well though.
Finally, for those that will scream "child porn", it should be noted that a very, very small minority of tor traffic is actually linked to that type of content, despite what the DoJ says; the best estimates from the tor project is around 1.5%. This move by Mozilla is a good thing - amongst other things helping countless defenders of freedom in oppressed regimes speak up in safety.