Hello,

I'm interesting in discussing the development aspects of using Tor as a massively distributed anonymous file server where blocks (e.g. 4KB) of a particular file (e.g. even several GB in size) might be redundantly distributed on very many hidden service nodes (e.g. a unique 4KB block of a file redundantly duplicated on ~ x hidden nodes from y million total hidden service nodes) and access to the file would be high through-put because very many (e.g. cable bandwidth / 4KB, e.g. 50 Mbps is 6.25 MB/s or 1600 * 4KB blocks per second) concurrent but high latency Tor circuits. Thus each Tor circuit would still be the usual high latency, but very many Tor circuits in parallel would deliver fantastic through-put. What if Tor could handle several rolling window bundles of e.g. 1,600 parallel Tor circuits which request one small block of info from 1,600 unique hidden service nodes? Does Tor parallelized, high bandwidth file sharing already exist? Does Tor already handle a massively parallelized number of Tor circuits, on the scale of thousands or tens of thousands of Tor circuits? Is many concurrent Tor circuits desirable? Who is working on it? Would using Tor as a massively distributed anonymous file server dramatically increase the number of Tor nodes (due to file sharing being more desirable than anonymity) and therefore make the entire Tor system more resilient to attack due to high growth and orders of magnitude more nodes? Is such an expansion -- on the back of a new functional focal point; i.e. not anonymity -- politically desirable for the Tor project?

Thanks, Simon

Experienced network programming enthusiast from Vancouver, Canada