4 ToxNetworkResilience
emdee edited this page 2022-10-28 10:29:27 +00:00

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Tox relies on "bootstrap" nodes to be able to find your Friends. That list of nodes is quite small, < 100, and you can find it in the file often called DHTnodes.json. If a country like Iran can block those nodes, they can block Tox. Whether Tox is encrypted makes no difference in their ability to block.

Tox works well over Tor, which should help. If they can't block Tor, then they can't block Tox over Tor. And Tor is evolving stratagies to help defeat blocking, like snowflake. As Tor evolves its resillience strategies, Tox over Tor evolves with it. It is much harder to block Tox over Tor than to block services like WhatsApp which relay on centralized servers, unless the service runs a OnionV3 Tor service that makes if accesible directly over Tor.

Everyone who wants to help the network be resilient to blocking should run their clients like toxic with the -T, --tcp-relay if they are not using Tor. Choose a random port number > 10000 < 65000 for the port. If you are not running over Tor and are on a stable connection, try it.

Every BSnode operator who wants to help the network be resilient in places like Iran should run a Tor server that provides the node as an onionV3 service; see ToxAndTorInChinaAndIran.

If you run a bootstrap node, you can run a Tor Ononv3 gateway to the node by simply following the directions in AddingAnOnionService.