What are the benefits of hosting a lighting clearnet node?

[Egii Nna]

I looked into the operation of clearnet nodes. The benefits of hosting a lighting clearnet node as opposed to one behind the TOP proxy. Can somebody clarify what we get from that, perhaps in a list of bullet points? Will that lead to a rise in usage? Or is it more important that you can access it from any device, anywhere?
I'm specifically requesting the benefits. You can, however, draw attention to the drawbacks as well.

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[apogio]

I have tried both clearnet and tor on my LND nodes.

The major difference that I have noticed is the speed of the payments routing.

Tor only nodes tend to have unstable connections.

At the same time it allows you to connect to other nodes much easier. A clear net node can't connect to a tor only node. So if you reverse this statement, running a tor only node will restrict clear net nodes from connecting to you.

In fact I would argue that running a hybrid mode of node is much better.

[seek3r]

The main points between a clearnet and a TOR lightning node accessibility and anonymity.
If you dont want to reveal your real IP address and your goal is privacy you have to go with a TOR node.

The benefits of hosting a clearnet node that which you asked for is the accessibility to your node.
Your clearnet node is visible to other clearnet nodes which helps you to establish new channels/connections. The connection between clearnet nodes is ofc faster aswell.

[pooya87]

Privacy always comes at a cost.
When you use Tor, apart from the slower communication speed you will also consume more traffic which could be a small concern for those with a capped network. Each time you use Tor, apart from the Tor relay information you have to download, all your communication is also encrypted which adds an extra overhead.

[Ruttoshi]

You can run clearnet nodes without using TOR directly, and it will work perfectly. It has little dormant and more fit to be relied on than TOR. If you route everything through TOR, the indirection overhead will be 3X, because it will choose at least 3 in between nodes AFIAK.


https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/120096/advantages-of-running-a-lightning-clearnet-node-compared-to-one-behind-a-tor-pro

[BlackHatCoiner]

The basic burden of the tor-nodes in lightning, is that they are usually operated by hobbyists who do this for fun and to test the environment. The most liquidity is sitting on top of clearnet nodes, which are run by large companies with sufficient liquidity and connections, and with priority to approach zero routing failures.

You should open channels with these clearnet accessible nodes if you want a stable and comfortable user experience. I think you can do this via Tor without losing the benefit; it will only go slightly slower.

[DaveF]

Or do both.

TOR for a bunch of connections to smaller hobby nodes and clearnet to the big public only ones.

You would give up some (OK a lot) of privacy, but you would have the option of how you want to route payments.

You can actually open to a clearnet from the TOR one, so you could just route all your payments through the TOR one and if needed it would use your clearnet for the next hop.

-Dave

[Egii Nna]

All contributions and clarifications impact me a lot. I will use this medium to thank all those that provide me with more information that has been added to my own experience. Thank you all again, and I will also welcome any additional information to those that have already been stated to have more knowledge because knowledge is never too small for a researcher (like me).

[NotATether]

Privacy always comes at a cost.
When you use Tor, apart from the slower communication speed you will also consume more traffic which could be a small concern for those with a capped network. Each time you use Tor, apart from the Tor relay information you have to download, all your communication is also encrypted which adds an extra overhead.

It is possible to simply run the Lightning node on a VPS or other rented hardware and have that configured to connect to your Bitcoin RPC server running on your actual device, without the privacy disadvantages (as long as it's not running anything else) - but caveats listed here apply, since you want to prevent the transmission of passwords and stuff over HTTP.