Questions relating to relays, their maintenance, and operation.
Relays are the servers that make up the Tor network. They forward user traffic through the network.
Since connections through the network are usually three hops long, we can - for a given connection - differentiate between three roles a node can play:
- guard: The node is the first in a circuit. This is the node the user connects to directly. It knows who the user is, but it doesn't know where they are going or what they are sending.
- middle: A server sitting in between the first and last hop. The only information this node has is that some connection is going from the guard to the exit. It doesn't know who initiated the connection or where it's going.
- exit: The last hop in a path through the network. This one knows that a user is going to a specific site, such as www.torproject.org, but it doesn't know who it is, assuming the connecting is encrypted or doesn't contain any personal information.
Questions with this tag should be related to relays in general and their operation and security. Questions that are specific to exits or guards should be tagged with their respective tags: exit-relays or guard.
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