[tor-bugs] #7106 [Tor]: Write "how to be nice to the Tor network" spec

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki torproject-admin at torproject.org
Sat Oct 13 01:28:07 UTC 2012


#7106: Write "how to be nice to the Tor network" spec
----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------
 Reporter:  arma                        |          Owner:                  
     Type:  project                     |         Status:  new             
 Priority:  normal                      |      Milestone:  Tor: unspecified
Component:  Tor                         |        Version:                  
 Keywords:  SponsorZ, spec, tor-client  |         Parent:                  
   Points:                              |   Actualpoints:                  
----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------
 In talking to Jake, I realized that there are still some people who expect
 jtor to be a workable Tor client one day. In fact, we've even been writing
 some funding proposals that make this assumption.

 One of the main issues we're going to have with an alternate Tor client is
 that while it may follow our network specs, it will have different
 observable behavior than the mainline Tor client.

 First, this different behavior will make users partitionable. Fine, we can
 accept that. But we should finish writing path-spec.txt so authors of
 other clients can have at least a chance of doing things the way "real"
 Tor does.

 Second, it's easy to make client-side decisions that harm the Tor network.
 For examples, you can hold your TLS connections open too long, or do too
 many TLS connections, or make circuits too often, or ask the directory
 authorities for everything. We need to write up a spec to clarify how
 well-behaving Tor clients should do things. Maybe that means we write up
 some principles along the way, or maybe we just identify every design
 point that matters and say what to do for each of them.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/7106>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online


More information about the tor-bugs mailing list