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I think I messed up my router or my modem using Tor as a relay.

This week, I decided to buy a new router and it fixed my problem, but the problem came back tonight.

Here's the problem:

Some websites are simply unaccessible. While I can browse the Web as usual, I can't load http://uqam.ca/ and monoprice.com/. On Monoprice, I get an error 502.

My modem is a coaxial cable one... My ISP is Cogeco Canada.

My relay is a wired Raspberry Pi 3 plugged on the same router I use to share my Internet with smartphones, laptop and wired desktops. The Raspberry Pi is dedicated to running Tor.

Here are a few custom torrc lines I wrote:

SOCKSPort 0
ORPort 443
ExitPolicy reject *:*
ExitRelay 0
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  • I fixed my problem this morning! I had to spoof my router’s MAC address … :| Any thoughts?
    – Philippe Morin
    Commented May 11, 2018 at 15:35

2 Answers 2

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Yes, it's possible that running a non-exit relay will result in your IP address being blacklisted.

As such, some sites which use those blacklists will deny you access to their site on the basis that you're on some blacklist.

This can be easily checked by loading the site through another proxy service, some simple examples would be Google Translate, isup.me or archiving a live copy of the site through an archive service.

This shows the site to be live, but denying access from multiple exit points from the Tor network.

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  • As I just wrote above, I had to spoof my router's MAC address and it worked. I only fixed my problem this morning... Would you say my TOR relay had anything to do with that? Is my ISP filtering my MAC address or it is coming from other providers (Web hosting servers, DNS Servers, etc.?)
    – Philippe Morin
    Commented May 11, 2018 at 15:42
  • How would the site know your IP Address if you aren't an exit node? You should clarify that this should only happen with sites actively using (shady) third-party blacklists. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something though.
    – DylanYoung
    Commented Dec 16, 2020 at 0:08
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No, the relay is not "guilt" in the internet issues: as far as I can see your torrc - it is not routing or proxifying your LAN devices. The only possible problem can be a bandwidth being consumed all by the relay - but "Error 502" is a server-side error, Tor can not cause it. What you can do is to enable a traffic accounting by bandwidth, i.e. limit the speed of your Tor relay. Like this:

BandwidthRate 1024KBytes
BandwidthBurst 1024KBytes

it will limit to one megabyte per second, i.e. 8 megabits per second. Try these lines, but only if you have a poor and/or glitchy connection. Another rare reason may be the ridiculous fact when a websites are banning by ip all the Tor nodes, not just exits - but it's very rare. By the way - these websites are not opening for me as well from a different places including a datacenter-based VPS'es, so it's likely a websites remote problem

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  • I never used BandwidthRate and BandwidthBurst lines, but only RelayBandwidthRate and RelayBandwidthBurst (I used 4Mbits [which are Mibits, not Mbits] and 8Mbits respectively) I'm really confused...
    – Philippe Morin
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 1:03
  • they are more global but these sites are not working from 3 locations for me as well. What is your connection speed on your ISP plan?
    – Alexey Vesnin ♦
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 1:05
  • 40Mibits Download and 10Mibits Upload I reset both my router and modem an hour ago and my relay is unplugged since. :o
    – Philippe Morin
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 1:15
  • OK, all the rest of the websites are working fine?
    – Alexey Vesnin ♦
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 1:16
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    Wow... That's a bummer...I'll try to communicate with uqam.ca since it is an university... :| Thanks! :(
    – Philippe Morin
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 1:35

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