Useful metrics for relay operators
Hello all, After Roger's recent checkin emails to this list, some of the folks from the community and metrics teams have started to brainstorm ways that we could use Onionoo data [1] to give better support and recognition to the relay operators. For example, a weekly mail of all the relays that just passed the "earned a tshirt" threshold, or some other threshold about how much bandwidth they've pushed over a period of time. The community team would then contact the operator(s) and congratulate them, thank them for their service, see if we can offer them help in any other ways, and so forth. I'd like to hear directly from relay operators about what kinds of metrics they might like to see involved in a project like this. Have you achieved milestones with your relays that you wished Tor Project would have given you some recognition for? Have there been specific times you'd wished for a checkin email, like the one Roger sent (eg 3 months after starting a new relay)? Anything else that you think Onionoo could measure that would be valuable for you as an operator? Thank you so much for running relays! Looking forward to hearing from you. Alison [1] https://onionoo.torproject.org/
It would be nice if atlas would show absolute and relative trending information about how well a relay (or family) does (better, worse, unchanged) when it comes to CW and CW fraction. i.e. with arrow up / down signs with green/red indicators "This relay's CW fraction increased by xx" To better interpret this information, it could be put in context with: "...while the tor network grew by xxx 'cw capacity' " "This relay's absolute CW value increased by xx" I find it best to use weekly stats (compare last 7 days vs. the week before that) to ignore day of the week fluctuations. For the general health of the tor network I would find it good if relay operators looking at their relays on atlas get an immediate traffic light based indicator: examples: green: relay runs the latest stable version, has non-empty contactinfo yellow: empty contactinfo, myfamily misconfiguration, plaintext protocols only in exit policy red: runs not recommended version Or maybe have a rating with letters A, B, C, D, ... instead of a traffic light based approach.
We already use Onionoo to identify and choose fallback directory mirrors. Every release, we identify operators of long-term stable relays, and ask them if they are able to be a fallback directory mirror. Then we choose a slightly different set of fallbacks for each release. These fallbacks help new clients contact the Tor network when the directory authorities are blocked. While it's not a t-shirt, it does recognise an important contribution to the network. And we do hard-code the relay details in the Tor source code. When we do the 0.2.9 fallback update, I'll make sure I keep others on the Tor team in the loop, so that relay operators know who to contact if I'm away. (Oh, and please let us know if you're getting *too much* email!) Tim Tim Wilson-Brown (teor) teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n xmpp: teor at torproject dot org
Did someone mention t-shirts? When is the last time anyone got a t-shirt?
I'm pretty sure Jon has been sending them out on a regular basis. (We're trying to automate the process a bit more.) If you want one, please feel free to get in touch with him, I've CC'd him on this email. Tim Tim Wilson-Brown (teor) teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n xmpp: teor at torproject dot org
Am 01.09.2016 um 05:39 schrieb teor:
Hi Tim, if not changed the person in charge should be Juris not Jon - a little bit similar :-) I would bet nobody got a T-shirt this year - otherwise there wouldn’t be a moaning every now an then, especially from Robert. I, waiting for a shirt as well, was offering my help on June, 13th in this group - nobody ever came back on that. Rgds Paul
Jon is sending out T-Shirts from the Tor office in Seattle. Juris was sending them out from torservers.net in Berlin. I believe there's been a transition recently, after Jon was employed to help out with administrative tasks like t-shirts.
I would bet nobody got a T-shirt this year - otherwise there wouldn’t be a moaning every now an then, especially from Robert.
I, waiting for a shirt as well, was offering my help on June, 13th in this group - nobody ever came back on that.
I'm sorry about that. There has been a transition between different people. Also, our automated t-shirt email system Tor Weather wasn't working correctly, and we're doing it manually for the moment. I've CC'd Jon on this email as well. You can get in touch with him to arrange a t-shirt. Tim
Tim Wilson-Brown (teor) teor2345 at gmail dot com PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n xmpp: teor at torproject dot org
On 9/1/2016 12:18 PM, patacca wrote: [SNIP]
The expiration date of the temporary ed25519 signing key is included in the server's descriptor afaik, but there's no way to know if a relay has OfflineMasterKey enabled or not. We could add this extra info but I would disagree since this will advertise which relays have this enabled and which not. The system is designed in a way that you should not use OfflineMasterKey if you want to leave your relay unattended or don't have time to renew keys. A simple script installed on the relay and executed by a cronjob can determine the expiration date of the ed25519 signing key and send an email when there's less than X minutes/days remaining. I don't think this should be a network wide default.
participants (8)
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Alison -
I -
nusenu -
pa011 -
patacca -
s7r -
Sebastian Niehaus -
teor