[ooni-dev] Cooperation between OONI & RIPE Atlas

Tue Sep 15 16:18:26 UTC 2015

> I'll look into this & see if someone can make it.
> Can is be over... video-conferencing??
> Some of the people who might contribute have family
> obligations that stop them from traveling to much...

Totally understand that.  I feel the primary benefit is making social
connections between the Tor Measurements people and the RIPE measurements
people, however, if teleconference is the best we can get we will take it.

> I asked my colleagues to look into this, I'll get back
> to you with more info later.
> Any more info? Which countries are you looking into? How
> "scriptable" should the solution be? How often do you
> have to make decisions? Who will be using the data -
> experts or end-users? etc-lots of questions :)

This is a little hard to answer.  But in short we want to minimize the
amount of useful information than an adversary logging Tor-relay traffic
receives.  This is often thought to be equivalent to "maximizing
topographic diversity", but the two are unlikely 100% the same.  A precise
definition of what we want to minimize will probably have be provided by
Nick or Roger (prob in Berlin).

But to give you something to go on now, we have two explicit use cases.
They are:
(1) Torservers.net has money to place a new relay.  It wants a list of ASs
sorted by the topological diversity that a relay in that AS would add to
the Tor network.
(2) We are developing a rating system that quantifiers how much a given
operator contributes to the Tor network (see www.tor-roster.org).  We want
to take every existing relay and give it "ASN bonus points" for being on
that particular AS.  ASs that are relatively distant from the rest of the
network are worth more points.

Answering your questions...
* Application (1): Doesn't have to be automated.  Maybe once a month.  Only
for experts.  https://www.torservers.net/ is the obvious user.
* Application (2): Needs to be automated.  Every day.  Only for experts.
http://www.tor-roster.org/ is the obvious user.

>> The proposal is encourage OONI agents to place an Atlas
>> anchor next (to) every major  point.
> (how many points?)

OONI people: Can one of you comment here?  How many points could you commit
to place Anchors on?  Would Anchor measurements be sufficient

> 1) current model of placing RIPE Atlas anchors is for
> the operators to pay for the HW themselves -- it's a
> Soekris box + SSD, total price around 800 Euros.

OONI people: Comments?  How much is it worth it to you to have traffic
disruptions be automatically seen by the wider network infrastructure
community?  If 800 is too much, here's a proposal...  instead of putting
the RIPE anchor *next to* the OONI probe, what about the RIPE anchor
*being* the OONI probe?  If the RIPE anchor becomes the (obviously
unofficial) OONI probe... 800 euro seems reasonable... maybe OONI can get a
volume discount?

OONI people: Are there features the RIPE anchor would need to fully serve
as a OONI probe?

> Even if some of them are involved in censorship. And they
> are also paying for the project -- so if they think that
> the results are not favorable towards them, they might
> get pissed off.

Totally understand that.  I do not speak for OONI, but I get that RIPE must
maintain neutrality and cannot be directly involved in anti-censorship
causes.  To support this, I suggest RIPE frame any cooperation as "enjoying
the free labor of OONI's 'network disruption enthusiasts' to achieve RIPE's
neutral goal of having an accurate up-to-date picture of the Internet.
Whatever goals OONI has is their own business.  RIPE is just happy to have
an unpaid army placing Anchors everywhere."

-V

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 5:53 PM Vesna Manojlovic <BECHA at ripe.net> wrote:

> Hi Virgil, all,
>
> On 14-sep.-15 20:53, Virgil Griffith wrote:
> >  > When is the "Berlin meeting"?
> > Sept 27 - Oct 3.
> >
> >
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2015SummerDevMeeting
>
> I'll look into this & see if someone can make it.
>
> > Most of the Tor-dev team will be at the Berlin meeting, and we'd love to
> > have a presentation on your work!
>
> Can is be over... video-conferencing??
>
> Some of the people who might contribute have family obligations that
> stop them from traveling to much...
>
> > One open-problem we have is how to
> > quantify the "AS topological diversity" of the Tor relay network.
>
> We have two data sets & "tools" that might help you there:
> http://ris.ripe.net
> http://stat.ripe.net
>
> and maybe
> https://stat.ripe.net/special/bgplay
>
> > One  recent proposal is to use data from:
> > http://labs.apnic.net/vizas
>
> looks good :)
>
> > And prioritize placing Tor relays on the well-connected ASs that don't
> > already have relays.  Very interested in any ideas for using your data
> > to quantify Tor's topological diversity.
>
> Me too!
>
> I asked my colleagues to look into this, I'll get back to you with more
> info later.
>
> Any more info? Which countries are you looking into? How "scriptable"
> should the solution be? How often do you have to make decisions? Who
> will be using the data - experts or end-users? etc-lots of questions :)
>
> >  > it is now only possible to do HTTP measurements
> >  > towards RIPE Atlas anchors.
> >
> >  >> doing this will yoke the interests of generic network
> >  >> infrastructure people with those of Tor and OONI.
> >
> >  > That's certainly one way of "cooperating".
> >
> > Forgive me, but I can't tell if you are being sarcastic.
>
> Sorry, it's my English & the medium of email...
>
> I was not sarcastic, I was serious, but careful.
>
> > The proposal is encourage OONI agents to place an Atlas anchor next
>  > (to) every major  point.
>
> (how many points?)
>
> > RIPE gets dedicated volunteersplacing quality Atlas anchors
> > around the world, and OONI gets the pleasure of knowing any detected
> > censorship is additionally detected as a network disruption.
>
> That would be wonderful!
>
> However...
>
> 1) current model of placing RIPE Atlas anchors is for the operators to
> pay for the HW themselves -- it's a Soekris box + SSD, total price
> around 800 Euros.
>
> Do you think that those dedicated volunteers you mention want to invest
> in more HW?
>
> Otherwise -- there is a proposal to introduce "VM probes" soon (early
> next year), and maybe this would be more suitable?
>
> Forgive me if I assume that the price might be a problem...
>
> 2) measuring censorship is NOT main goal of RIPE Atlas currently. As it
> is, RIPE Atlas is a project of RIPE NCC, which is a Regional registry &
> it has to stay neutral towards all its members -- telcos, ISPs,
> governments. Even if some of them are involved in censorship. And they
> are also paying for the project -- so if they think that the results are
> not favorable towards them, they might get pissed off.
>
> This did not happen yet, althou we did use RIPE Atlas measurements to
> point out towards Turkish government meddling with DNS:
>
>
> https://labs.ripe.net/Members/emileaben/a-ripe-atlas-view-of-internet-meddling-in-turkey
>
> So, we need to proceed carefully here. Let's keep talking...
>
> >  > We can also somehow do it via MLabs,  alhou our cooperation
> >  > with them is very slow -- two large bureaucracies add lots
> >  > of inertia ;-)
> >
> > I don't know this MLabs.  Elaborate?
>
> Apparently OONI already cooperates with MLabs. It's Google's
> measurements platform. We also use some of their data. It was a
> far-fetched suggestion, so lets stick to our own ideas for now.
>
> Thanks, looking forward to hear more from you,
> Vesna
>
>
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