Speeding up TOR

Some of us might use TOR so I'd like to share some code to speed up TOR slightly.

If you use TOR, you probably have experienced slow connections sometimes. Below, I'll attempt to give instructions to speed up TOR.

First thing is you will need to have Vidalia bundle installed. (obviously)

Next, double-click the icon for Vidalia Control Panel in your task bar. This should bring up the Vidalia Control Panel

Click on "settings" to bring up the settings screen.
Click on the "Advanced" button to bring up that tab.
Take not of the path to the "Tor Configuration File".
Go to that location and open up the "torrc".

***Alternative to the above instructions***
Go to START - PROGRAMS - VIDALIA BUNDLE - TOR - TORRC

This will open up the Torrc in notepad.

******
Make a backup of torrc before editing.

After you get the torrc open, at the end of it, paste the following code:


-------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Try for at most NUM seconds when building circuits. If the circuit isn't
# open in that time, give up on it. (Default: 1 minute.)
CircuitBuildTimeout 5
# Send a padding cell every N seconds to keep firewalls from closing our
# connections while Tor is not in use.
KeepalivePeriod 60
# Force Tor to consider whether to build a new circuit every NUM seconds.
NewCircuitPeriod 15
# How many entry guards should we keep at a time?
NumEntryGuards 8

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Go back to the Vidalia Control Panel from the task bar and click Stop Tor, then Start Tor. This will restart Tor.

Hope this helps and if anyone else knows of any other settings that can optimize TOR for maximum performance.

THE ANTI-VIRUS OR ANTI-MALWARE TEST FILE

The EICAR test file (official name: EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File) is a file, developed by the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research, to test the response of computer antivirus (AV) programs. The rationale behind it is to allow people, companies, and AV programmers to test their software without having to use a real computer virus that could cause actual damage should the AV not respond correctly. EICAR likens the use of a live virus to test AV software to setting a fire in a trashcan to test a fire alarm, and promotes the EICAR test file as a safe alternative.
AV programmers set the EICAR string as a verified virus like any other signatures. A compliant virus scanner, when detecting the file, will respond in exactly the same manner as if it found genuinely harmful code. Its use can be more versatile than straightforward detection: a file containing the EICAR test string can be compressed or archived, and then the antivirus software can be run to see whether it can detect the test string in the compressed file.
The file is simply a text file of either 68 or 70 bytes that is a legitimate executable file called a COM file that can be run by Microsoft operating systems and some work-alikes (except for 64-bit due to 16-bit limitations), including OS/2. When executed, it will print "EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!" and then stop. The test string was specifically engineered to consist of ASCII human-readable characters, easily created using a standard computer keyboard. It makes use of self-modifying code to work around technical issues that this constraint makes on the execution of the test string.
An EICAR test file can be easily created using any text editor, i.e. Notepad. To create an EICAR test file, copy and paste the following line into a blank Notepad file:

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

Save the file as any file name you want. It is now ready for testing. In fact, if your active protection was working properly, the simple act of saving the file should have triggered an alert.