How long does it take for an exit-node to reach maturity?
That is, if I create an exit node and leave it running, how long will it take for the exit to be fully utilised, provided nothing goes wrong?
Additionally what does it take to get the "Exit" flag and what does this flag actually do?
This question is inspired by a blog post that discusses the life cycle of a regular, non-exit relay.
As far as the Tor-Spec says, a Relay
is called an 'Exit' iff it allows exits to at least two of the ports 80, 443, and 6667 and allows exits to at least one /8 address space.
So, from that point, you just need to configure a Relay as given here and let it propagate its state. Further on, I can cite an article about the experiences setting up an exit-relay:
Traffic came in slowly at first, but after 1 or 2 days, the node’s presence had propagated through the net and it started to max out CPU and bandwidth limits as configured.
As far as I can tell, that's all. I guess it's like that, because there are not much Exit-Relays, so if there is a new one, we just use them, not waiting for them to approve its potential.
