A "fast but less secure" button
I would like to suggest, as an improvement, to make a "faster but less secure" button on the Vidalia control panel.
It should allow to decrease the number of relays down to a simple anonymizer mode, where no internal relays are used at all but only some exit node is used as an anonymizer.
This may be useful for users slightly frustrated by slow speed of Tor, if they would, else, choose the pure clearnet for non-critical applications. So they can use a fast mode which almost looks like a safe Tor connection. The speed would be the same as for any other anonymizer.
Moreover, this would be a nice place to suggest the user, to improve his own safety in this much less safe mode, to allow the use of his node as an internal relay. (To tell him that internal nodes have none of the problems of exit nodes, but that it is increasing his safety if his node works as an internal node, especially if the exit node is a bad one.)
So the user can use Tor in a fast way for uncritical things, giving more resources to more critical applications, and may help to find new internal relays.
Trac:
Username: Ilja