**i will presage the expected warnings before posting my question: i fully understand the security risks involved using single hops, however, with regards to my goals i have *zero* need for anonymity.** i am interested in archiving the contents of several tor hidden services e.g. discussion forums, and am not intending on doing anything illegal. as a consequence, my interest is having a high bandwidth connection to these websites, with no need to remain anonymous. i understand that one may recompile tor to create single hop circuits e.g. http://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/1312/how-to-decrease-number-of-tor-hops I also understand that while one may wish to construct a single hop circuit, very few relays have the single hop exit option enabled. my questions are two-fold. **1. can tor hidden services detect that a client is using just a single hop, and reject the connection?** i been advised by someone that this does occur, but I am unable to find anything that indicates that this indeed the case. **2. is the below configuration possible possible?** - recompile tor to allow for single hops - using a second instance of tor, create a relay allowing single hop exits - configure the re-compiled tor to use this exit relay