[tor-bugs] #2681 [Tor Client]: brainstorm ways to let Tor clients use yesterday's consensus more safely

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#2681: brainstorm ways to let Tor clients use yesterday's consensus more safely
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 Reporter:  arma         |          Owner:       
     Type:  enhancement  |         Status:  new  
 Priority:  normal       |      Milestone:       
Component:  Tor Client   |        Version:       
 Keywords:               |         Parent:  #2664
   Points:               |   Actualpoints:       
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 Right now Tor clients won't use a consensus that's 25 hours old. But if
 the directory authorities don't agree on a consensus for a day, things can
 go bad. We need to investigate other tradeoffs in this space than the one
 we've currently picked.

 For instance: if you got your directory consensus info when it was valid,
 but you haven't been able to get any new consensus, perhaps you should be
 more forgiving about the timestamp on the consensus you have. That's a
 slightly different scenario than believing a new consensus that's 48 hours
 old.

 Another option is just to change 24 to 48, which probably doesn't put
 clients at much greater harm, but gives us a lot more breathing room for
 mistakes.

 The implementation side of this will be tricky, because we'll need to make
 sure that clients can handle descriptors that are 36 hours out of date
 too. We started implementing that feature several times, but I think we've
 never finished it.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2681>
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