This node

Status & policy

Everything a person deciding whether to trust this node should be able to check. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and it gets fixed.

Specifications

Uptime

The node runs on a dedicated virtual server and is intended to stay up continuously, with restarts only for security updates to the host. Its DHT public key does not change across restarts, so a reboot does not invalidate anything you have configured.

There is no automated uptime graph on this page, and you should not take our word for availability. Verify it yourself — instructions are directly below, and a third party publishes independent status for nodes on the official list.

Check the node yourself

Confirm the TCP relay ports are accepting connections:

nc -vz node.toxbootstrap.org 443
nc -vz node.toxbootstrap.org 3389
nc -vz node.toxbootstrap.org 33445

Confirm DNS resolves to the address published above:

dig +short node.toxbootstrap.org

UDP is harder to test from outside — a UDP port that is open and one that is firewalled both look silent to a port scanner. The practical test is the real one: configure the node in a client, watch it connect, and see whether your contacts come online.

Logging policy

The node runs tox-bootstrapd in its standard configuration and logs to the system journal. Concretely:

• No message content is logged, because none exists here. Traffic through the relay is encrypted end to end and this machine holds no key that opens it.
• No Tox IDs are logged. A bootstrap node never sees them. What it sees is a DHT public key, which most clients regenerate at every start.
• Connection metadata passes through the operating system's normal logging — source addresses, timestamps, connection counts. Any machine on the internet records this; a node that claimed otherwise would be claiming something implausible.
• Nothing is sold, shared or handed to third parties outside a legally binding order from German authorities, which we would have to comply with like any other operator in that jurisdiction.

If your threat model makes any of that unacceptable, the honest advice is to run your own node, or route your client through Tor. The privacy page covers both.

Bandwidth and capacity

Bootstrap node traffic scales with how many clients use you. The Tox project's published estimate for a very popular, long-established node was roughly 700 GiB per month split evenly between inbound and outbound — a figure from 2016 that has grown since. This node is provisioned with headroom above its current load. If it ever becomes a bottleneck, that will be announced on the changelog rather than silently degrading.

A note on ports 443 and 3389

Neither port is running the service its number suggests. There is no web server on 443 and no remote desktop on 3389. Both are TCP relay listeners, chosen because restrictive networks usually leave them open — blocking them breaks things people need, so they tend to survive.

Consequence worth knowing: on a network you don't administer, intrusion detection systems may flag outbound traffic on 3389 as suspicious, since that port is heavily associated with remote desktop attacks. Nothing improper is happening, but you may get a conversation with your network administrator. On a managed corporate network, use 33445 or ask first.

Reporting a problem

If the node is unreachable, behaving oddly, or if you believe it is being abused, get in touch. Include the time, your rough location or network, which port you were using, and what your client reported.

Please do not report "my client won't connect" without first trying a second bootstrap node from the official list. If neither works, the problem is almost certainly on your network rather than on ours, and that distinction saves everyone time.