Want to speed up TOR and make the TOR network and privoxy run faster? The TOR network is a free proxy solution if you don't care too much about the low level of anonymity it offers, but the main problem is that many times TOR is slow and pages don't load. This is due to the way the TOR network is setup, the speed of any connection you get through TOR will always be slower than elite proxies, but there are a few things you can do to try and make TOR run a little faster.
First, make sure you have the Vidalia bundled installed. Then, open up the Vidalia control panel from your task bar. With the control panel open, click on settings to open up the settings window. Then click on the advanced button and find the directory where your Tor configuration file is stored. Find that directory on your computer and open up the file called torrc. With the torrc config file open, copy and paste the following into the file:
# 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
# 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
With that done, save the file and go back to the Vidalia control panel. Stop and start Tor, this will load the changes you just made to the torrc file. The above changes should help speed up your TOR connections a little.