When chosing to become a relay, the bandwidth rate should NOT be set to maximum

[vidalia]

When a user chooses to become a relay, the default settings for bandwidth rate are 5MB/s average and 10MB/s peak. With the exception of those with dedicated 100mbit lines, these speeds are unrealistic and can cause one's connection to become horribly slow or unresponsive, which can, in turn, cause some new users to have a negative opinion of Tor and Vidalia.

While I understand the reasoning behind offering all available bandwidth to the Tor Network, users should first opt-in to offering "some" of their bandwidth to the Tor Network, and then be allowed to offer more later if they so choose. For example, the default after choosing to host a relay could be set to the minimum of 20KB/s; if their connection isn't fast enough to support that, then they shouldn't be running a Tor relay, while if their connection continues to work fine, they can tweak the settings further if they choose. Alternatively, perhaps Vidalia could determine approximately how fast a user's connection is, and configure Tor to use most, but not all of it.

[edmanm]

The settings displayed in Vidalia reflect Tor's own default values.