-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 I guess it makes sense to make this change a bit more visible on the tor-relays mailing list since relay ops will notice the change eventually and not everyone is reading changelogs closely. A lot of relays will loose their guard flag (and probably see less traffic?) once enough dir auths [1] upgraded to 0.2.5.6-alpha. For the background see the changelog [2]:

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o Minor features: - Authorities now assign the Guard flag to the fastest 25% of the network (it used to be the fastest 50%). Also raise the consensus weight that guarantees the Guard flag from 250 to 2000. For the current network, this results in about 1100 guards, down from 2500. This step paves the way for moving the number of entry guards down to 1 (proposal 236) while still providing reasonable expected performance for most users. Implements ticket 12690.

It will be interesting to follow the metrics graphs during that transition. I.e. will the guard bw history go down or will the remaining relays handle the same amount of traffic without any difference? (and similar questions) https://metrics.torproject.org/bandwidth.html#bandwidth-flags [1] https://consensus-health.torproject.org/#authorityversions [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2014-July/034180.html -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJT2rO6AAoJEDcK3SCCSvoeh4sP/iH6DKlOLtCo1ZoBYKsZx+EJ jir+Lk4urwU+3MeM5Ikbb/XTCXY9Y3RCX8tTG65tn+NoLKNJP/fUGuz8A87Vrc48 ismcoSPrjpgX358VMLy7gO9i1tZGLGDd6qNuh0hLws1Z1JVMBACQKv6ZJrSuaoy6 gM/+htBawyRy8KC9Lsw4C6RZsu8b5Kintn9D6MmcWwVIDY8voB3wyypeZZLWaFzI N9sfyT9M4GC+i2CyWsYNdXB/x6z+IEsq0FE0XMdaLr0W17vh8pef0X3XH06h+MUf GsqK86MkjiYfQ0KfMkA/XfYCA3AWTdMSn63L40cDtLqBEHILlvpY/awWX0G78cnU D6cyhRs/R9rUlzvxMxtEF2mMrhvMAkWhz3JrqoEh0o6eOOF9QsOB700rovNsNufw tCYw/PfDD8PVj/J38jcidxo4VBtLcIrdnSInFuLezyZtvKvlCgzMomu8fOdSLxgf gXmKLY6MzduQFAqgYOg5eu33zMSqiTckC2mWPJXWiJ8m5uRbgw57I+7DjTalB4lD KTBTbtjLf+jbZOYn+E8bmoi8hQFPfhjkMMaqSIXeooqDa2xTbYlmEgPy4VmW5rLf cJd1rM2irw9yMKIYMMcI/aLG5uWZJ5pYAw0zWNA1aBzp33mgJ1yFbdhk9BMA+3/G rqNAV1pSC4brVzn4nF++ =02Sf -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----