Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: Nellion on October 22, 2012, 10:20 pm
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I am using Liberte Linux which uses a Torified browser and browsing websites, SR especially, is super slow! It is very agitating waiting 5 minutes for a site to load only to get the time out error.
Is there any way to speed up Torified browser in Liberte Linux or even Liberte Linux itself. Liberte as an OS is running decently fast for me so that's not a huge issue, but the faster the better goes for everything ;).
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The speeds vary. Today its been pretty brutal.
You can help by running your own tor node/server :)
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The Internet does not care how fast your computer is, and sorry, you can not speed up the Internet.
Sometimes it is slow, sometimes it is fast. It just depends. Mornings are usually best for me. Evenings suck. I understand though that my communication is bouncing through several nodes in order to protect my privacy, and that I don't have to pay for it. Seems like a fair trade. <shrug>
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Oh, I agree- it's totally worth the services provided to deal with. But, if I could make it better I most certainly would. :)
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Tor will always be a little slow compared to a regular browser because your data traffic is bounced through a group of relays located all over the world. Also, there are many people using Tor and there is relatively little bandwidth.
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For any of us old timers who were online when 56K was considered fast, TOR is a breeze :)
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For any of us old timers who were online when 56K was considered fast, TOR is a breeze :)
I was saying the same thing to a buddy yesterday.
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For any of us old timers who were online when 56K was considered fast, TOR is a breeze :)
Whipper snapper!
I remember getting a big ol' boner when I upgraded my dial-up modem from 2400 baud to 9600. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
- Bit
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I'd recommend to be patient.
Does it really matter if you need a few seconds less to connect?
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Tor can become faster, but as far as I know, only by donating bandwith to the tor network. You will not even notice it yourself and you'd help out others.
Other than that, I don't know. Sometimes it seems that changing identity makes a difference, but that could just as well be a coincidence.
Patience is the key I suppose.
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you actually CAN speed up TOR. All it takes is a google search.
There is a file in the directory where you installed Tor called torrc.
It can be located in: C:\Users\<USER>\Downloads\Tor Browser\Data\Tor At least this is where I installed my Tor.
In any event you can find the torrc file in \Tor Browser\Data\Tor. You can also simply do a search on your computer by typing Vidalia and going from there.
Once you find the torrc file make a copy/backup of it first. After that, open the original torrc file with Notepad or some other text editor.
Step 1. Replace all the code in that file with the following:
Code:
# If non-zero, try to write to disk less frequently than we would otherwise.
AvoidDiskWrites 1
# Store working data, state, keys, and caches here.
DataDirectory .\Data\Tor
GeoIPFile .\Data\Tor\geoip
# Where to send logging messages. Format is minSeverity[-maxSeverity]
# (stderr|stdout|syslog|file FILENAME).
Log notice stdout
# Bind to this address to listen to connections from SOCKS-speaking
# applications.
SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1
# Try for at most NUM seconds when building circuits. If the circuit isn't
# open in that time, give up on it. (Default: 1 minute.)
CircuitBuildTimeout 5
# Send a padding cell every N seconds to keep firewalls from closing our
# connections while Tor is not in use.
KeepalivePeriod 60
# Force Tor to consider whether to build a new circuit every NUM seconds.
NewCircuitPeriod 15
# How many entry guards should we keep at a time?
NumEntryGuards 8
Step 2. Save the file, you may require administrative permissions to do so.
Step 3. Completely exit/restart Tor and let it connect.
Step 4. Hopefully everything went okay and your connection through Tor has sped up!
For Mac and Linux directions you will have to go to the site that I copied this from: (clearnet) http://hikiculture.net/topic3773.html
If any of you see that there are any problems that may arise from using these settings, please feel free to post those here.
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Anyone who follows meatwads advice will stick out like a sore thumb and be far easier to deanonymize.
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Anyone who follows meatwads advice will stick out like a sore thumb and be far easier to deanonymize.
Could you please elaborate on how this decreases anonymity???
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Anyone who follows meatwads advice will stick out like a sore thumb and be far easier to deanonymize.
Could you please elaborate on how this decreases anonymity???
Well for one it uses EIGHT entry guards instead of three. Tor devs are currently in the process of changed the default to TWO because even three is too many. Every entry guard you use is another possibility of having a compromised entry guard, and having a compromised entry guard is 50% of a timing attack. Plus you will stick out as someone using eight entry guards, which pretty much nobody does. If there were safe ways for Tor to go faster the Tor devs would implement them.
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I just re-read the first post and saw that the OP is using Liberté Linux. When I was still using that, it was also my experience that the Torified browser is slow. Now I use Ubuntu with the latest Tor Browser bundle for Linux, it is a lot faster (I get pretty acceptable speeds).
I don't know what the reason is, but switching to Ubuntu (or another OS) might solve your problem.
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For any of us old timers who were online when 56K was considered fast, TOR is a breeze :)
Whipper snapper!
I remember getting a big ol' boner when I upgraded my dial-up modem from 2400 baud to 9600. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
- Bit
This is so true. I remember those days, waiting for a page of plain text to load on a BBS... Good times, good times.
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Hidden services are so much faster today than ever before. People who complain about Tor speeds these days really must have ADHD.
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I upgraded to the alpha version of the tor bundle 1-2 weeks ago and ever since then I haven't had any timeout issues.
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Well for one it uses EIGHT entry guards instead of three. Tor devs are currently in the process of changed the default to TWO because even three is too many. Every entry guard you use is another possibility of having a compromised entry guard, and having a compromised entry guard is 50% of a timing attack. Plus you will stick out as someone using eight entry guards, which pretty much nobody does. If there were safe ways for Tor to go faster the Tor devs would implement them.
Ok then I am glad then that my torrc file happened to get overwritten when I upgraded to the latest version of TOR. Thank you for your help kmfkewm, if I could give you some karma I would.
Also, what effect does changing to a new identity on TOR have? I know that it makes it look like I am using a different IP address than before. Would this make me more or less anon? I tend to do it every thirty minutes or so.....
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Well for one it uses EIGHT entry guards instead of three. Tor devs are currently in the process of changed the default to TWO because even three is too many. Every entry guard you use is another possibility of having a compromised entry guard, and having a compromised entry guard is 50% of a timing attack. Plus you will stick out as someone using eight entry guards, which pretty much nobody does. If there were safe ways for Tor to go faster the Tor devs would implement them.
Ok then I am glad then that my torrc file happened to get overwritten when I upgraded to the latest version of TOR. Thank you for your help kmfkewm, if I could give you some karma I would.
Also, what effect does changing to a new identity on TOR have? I know that it makes it look like I am using a different IP address than before. Would this make me more or less anon? I tend to do it every thirty minutes or so.....
Your identity changes every ten minutes, so changing it every 30 minutes or so manually is pointless. The idea of changing IP makes sense in certain circumstances which is why the Tor developers have it as an option.
Example: You have 2x tormail accounts, but don't want to associate them.
The procedure is:
1. Logout of the first account.
2. Delete cookie.
3. Switch identity.
4. Wait a random amount of reasonable time.
5. Login to the other tormail account.
This makes it impossible for tormail to associate your accounts if they wanted to. A form of rudimentary traffic analysis I suppose. I doubt everybody uses this procedure, but it's a case in which switching your identity would make sense.
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@kmfkewm ADHD, huh? Wow, forgive me, your highness, for merely inquiring for ways to optimize my time. With working 50+ hrs a week and going to school part time, it would be very stupid of me to want my browser to operate at higher speeds, wouldn't it? Why would you even waste bandwith with such a post that contributes to nothing but your ego?
To everyone else who actually contributed something, thanks for all the input. I will look into Ubuntu as I assume it is superior to Liberte?
I do remember the 56k speeds, but I was just a sapling in those days, and yes, Tor (even on Liberte) is much faster than those speeds. There were no porn videos back then- just pictures lmao! Sorry if I came off unappreciative- I wasn't bitching about the developers accomplishments in any way, but Tor is faster on other OSs, so I thought there may be a way to speed it up on Liberte. Guess not, I will just have to get Ubuntu, I guess.
Thanks again for the help!
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a while ago bought that document that shows u some basic settings you can tweak to speed up tor browser. eg timeout settings etc.
but then the other day i came across a comment on a detailed tor wiki type page and the person referred to those
'speed up tor' guidelines i was using as very outdated and said something about "...especially since fingerprint something something has come so far ..." or words to that effect.
so whats the most updated tweaking guide that is best to use?
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@kmfkewm ADHD, huh? Wow, forgive me, your highness, for merely inquiring for ways to optimize my time. With working 50+ hrs a week and going to school part time, it would be very stupid of me to want my browser to operate at higher speeds, wouldn't it?
Well... frankly yeah, it would.
Because to use a metaphor, anonymity works in a similar way to a flock of birds or a herd of zebras moving. The moment there's a distinction between your setup and the next fellows, your anonymity suffers.
There is one way I think you can speed up your setup without damaging your anonymity too badly, and that's by becoming something other than a Tor client. e.g. a relay. You'll have to do some research, I believe on the upside you benefit from higher speeds and have more plausible deniability, but on the downside you could lose out to congestion attacks.