[Tox Support] Running a node.

[Rayet Areash]

Hi Damien, I'll answer your questions inline:

> On 5 Jan, 2016, at 22:19, Damien <skyguide.base at icloud.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello, I would like to contribute to your project and I have a couple of questions...
> 
> 1. Could you please clarify a bit what type of nodes are used to facilitate tox communications, in a different parts of wiki pages there is a bit different terminology.
>    There is mentioning of something called "DHT node", while under "running a node" section, node called a "bootstrap node". Is that a same thing?

Bootstrap nodes are simply DHT nodes which make their IP/port/public key public for others to use.
In practice there is no difference between regular DHT nodes and bootstrap nodes.

> 
> 2. It seems that in order to run a node, tox core has to be installed first. If that's the case, in instruction to install a Tox core, there is separate instruction for installing/including libraries to facilitate audio/video communications.
> Could you please clarify if this actually necessary to facilitate a full functionality including a audio/video communication for a tox users utilizing the node of a distributed tox network, or .... A/V libraries needed for... a local tox client on the system?

No, you do not need to install toxcore with A/V support to run a bootstrap node for all users.

> 
> 3. I'm considering running a vm (on esxi host) dedicated to the node. as a base OS, i will use ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server.
> This esxi host/ vm / node will be running behind PFsense 2.2.6 (FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE-p25).
> Could you provide a best practice recommendations in terms of all necessary network related config on the firewall, port forwarding, what ports (if any) would have to be opened...

You should open port 33445 on UDP, as well as any ports you set up for TCP relaying.
By default it's 33445, 3389, and 443 - you can change these.

> 
> 4. The cost of running the node - in terms of amount of traffic the node may receive - could you please estimate it or this is not something you can anticipate at all? Meaning - will I be slammed with huge traffic volume?

It depends - from my experience running a bootstrap node I would guess it uses around 40 kbyte/s
constantly. Maybe more if you end up relaying traffic for others. (You may wish to disable TCP
relaying altogether.)

> 
> 5. Can you make any comments regarding potential exposure to outside intrusion, including a state sponsored attacks. My host will be in USA and with all the issues we have going on over here (NSA) I am trying to scale how much of a target I personally may become, running a tox-core node.

An attacker would not gain anything from taking over your node (except maybe to turn it off).
Tox isn't huge right now so the incentive for attackers is pretty low too.

> Have you had any incidents when this already became an issue of node operators?
> 
> Note: The host will be physically connected via a residential i-net access, with a very slow connection rate.
> Could you please provide an absolute minimum requirements for the network in terms of up/down speed, and latency.

I don't have any numbers for you, but again, bandwidth matters more than speed.

> 
> The i-net facing interface of PFSense has a public IP address, it is Dynamic but it has a registered DDNS record.
> Would that be acceptable or even feasible to run a node?

Yes. I think there are some nodes that do this already.

> 
> Please let me know if you can, and thank you for your time.
> 
> Damien
> 
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