[tor-bugs] #2681 [Tor]: 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:  Tor: 0.2.4.x-final
Component:  Tor                                                                 |        Version:                    
 Keywords:  dirauth-dos-resistance proposal-needed MikePerry201210d tor-client  |         Parent:  #2664             
   Points:                                                                      |   Actualpoints:                    
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Comment(by asn):

 Just brainstorming here, but I wonder if some kind of metric on how
 quickly the Tor network changes would help us decide if 3 days is a better
 interval than 5 days.
 By "how quickly the Tor network changes", I mean that if you take a
 consensus X from 3 days ago and a consensus Y from today, what's the
 percentage of routers in Y that are also in X (based on identity key)?

 Such a metric could be a set of probability distributions that describe
 how likely it is for the Tor network to change by a specific amount in X
 days.
 So, for example, the probability distributions would tell us stuff like
 "Based on previous data, the Tor network has 40% chance to change by 20%,
 in five days." or "The Tor network has 80% chance to change by less than
 5%, in one day." or "The Tor network has 40% chance to change by 35%, in
 two months".

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2681#comment:14>
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