[tor-bugs] #6295 [Analysis]: Gather statistics about client usage patterns in a privacy-preserving way

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki torproject-admin at torproject.org
Fri Jul 6 14:18:37 UTC 2012


#6295: Gather statistics about client usage patterns in a privacy-preserving way
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 Reporter:  karsten   |          Owner:     
     Type:  task      |         Status:  new
 Priority:  normal    |      Milestone:     
Component:  Analysis  |        Version:     
 Keywords:            |         Parent:     
   Points:            |   Actualpoints:     
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Comment(by robgjansen):

 From a simulator standpoint, we want to know what the virtual clients
 should do.

 For HTTP-like users, we would want to know the size of a 'primary'
 request, how many 'embedded object' requests follow the primary, the size
 of each of the 'embedded objects', and how often to do the 'primary' ->
 'embedded' request process. For BitTorrent-like users, we'd like to know
 how many objects are pushed in each direction at the same time and the
 size of each object. Can we generalize remote-login users to the HTTP
 case?

 I hope we can gather this from what real Tor clients see. Can we focus on
 streams to collect the needed data? To start with, what about these stats:

  * Total number of clients
  * Total number of streams
  * Number of streams per client
  * Stream lifetime (how long a stream is open)
  * Time since last stream was created
  * Bytes sent per stream
  * Bytes received per stream

 I hope we can gather detailed distributions of these measurements, i.e.
 create a bunch of buckets and increment the correct bucket appropriately
 when a new measurement is made. We are not logging any source of
 destination addresses. I think I could use this data to create more
 accurate Tor clients in Shadow.

 Any thoughts on this? Am I missing something? What are the complications
 here?

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6295#comment:1>
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