[metrics-bugs] #33076 [Metrics/Analysis]: Graph onionperf and consensus information from Rob's experiments

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki blackhole at torproject.org
Thu Feb 13 08:26:54 UTC 2020


#33076: Graph onionperf and consensus information from Rob's experiments
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
 Reporter:  mikeperry                            |          Owner:
                                                 |  metrics-team
     Type:  task                                 |         Status:
                                                 |  needs_review
 Priority:  Medium                               |      Milestone:
Component:  Metrics/Analysis                     |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                               |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  metrics-team-roadmap-2020Q1, sbws-   |  Actual Points:  3
  roadmap                                        |
Parent ID:  #33121                               |         Points:  6
 Reviewer:                                       |        Sponsor:
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------

Comment (by karsten):

 Thanks, dennis_jackson, for the great input!

 I like your percentiles graph with the moving 24 hour window. We should
 include that graph type in our candidate list for graphs to be added to
 OnionPerf's visualization mode. Is that moving 24 hour window a standard
 visualization, or did you further process the data I gave you?

 Regarding the dataset behind bandwidth measurements, I wonder if we should
 kill the 50 KiB downloads in deployed OnionPerfs and only keep the 1 MiB
 and 5 MiB downloads. If we later think that we need time-to-50KiB, we can
 always obtain that from the tgen logs. The main change would be that
 OnionPerfs consume more bandwidth and also put more load on the Tor
 network. The effect for graphs like these would be that we'd have 5 times
 as many measurements.

 But I think (and hope) that you're wrong about measurements not having
 finished. If DATAPERC100 is non-null that actually means that the
 measurement reached the point where it received 100% of expected bytes.
 See also the [https://metrics.torproject.org/collector.html#type-torperf
 Torperf and OnionPerf Measurement Results data format description].

 It's quite possible that op-nl and op-us did not report measurements
 during the stated days. We have a reliability problem with the deployed
 OnionPerfs, which is why we included work on better notifications and
 easier deployment in our funding proposal. But we should also keep in mind
 that the main purpose of the currently deployed OnionPerfs is to have a
 baseline over the years. If we're planning experiments like this in the
 future we might want to spin up a couple OnionPerfs and watch them much
 more closely for a week or two.

 Are you sure about that 10k ttfb measurements number for the month of
 August? In theory, every OnionPerf instance should make a new measurement
 every 5 minutes. That's 12*24*31 = 8928 measurements per instance in
 August, or 8928*4 = 35712 measurements performed by all four instances in
 August. So, okay, not quite 10k, but also not that many more. We should
 spin up more OnionPerf instances as soon as it has become easier to
 operate them. What's a good number to keep running continuously, in your
 opinion? 10? 20? And maybe we should consider deploying more than 1
 instance per host or data center, so that we have more measurements with
 comparable network properties.

 To summarize, we have a new candidate visualization, a best practice to
 set up additional OnionPerfs when running experiments, and suggestions to
 kill 50 KiB measurements and to deploy more OnionPerf instances. Does this
 make sense?

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/33076#comment:24>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online


More information about the metrics-bugs mailing list