en	[[!meta title="Why is Tor slow?"]]

en	Users often find that the Tor network is slow. This page describes some reasons that make Tor slow.

en	Tor circuits lengthen the connections

en	Tor provides anonymity by building circuits with three relays. So instead of connecting directly to the destination server, a connection is made between each relay of the circuit and this takes more time.

en	Furthermore, Tor tries to build circuits with relays in different countries which make connection travel more and appear slower.

en	Quality of the relays

en	The Tor relays are run by volunteers in a decentralized way. So all relays are not of the same quality. Some are big and fast, while some others are smaller and slower. As a whole, the network could be faster if it had more capacity. To improve the capacity of the Tor network, you can either run a Tor relay yourself or [help existing relays](https://www.torservers.net/partners.html).

en	Misuse of the Tor network

en	Some people misuse the Tor network, sometimes on purpose or sometimes by lack of knowledge. For instance, Tor is sometimes used to conduct [[!wikipedia Ddos#Distributed_attack desc="DDoS attacks"]]. By doing this, the Tor relays are the ones who actually suffer from the attack, instead of the intended target. Some people use [[!wikipedia Peer_to_peer desc="peer-to-peer software"]] through Tor which is bad for the network.