[tor-bugs] #1854 [Analysis]: Investigate raising the minimum bandwidth for getting the Fast flag

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#1854: Investigate raising the minimum bandwidth for getting the Fast flag
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 Reporter:  arma                       |          Owner:  arma             
     Type:  task                       |         Status:  needs_information
 Priority:  normal                     |      Milestone:                   
Component:  Analysis                   |        Version:                   
 Keywords:  performance loadbalancing  |         Parent:                   
   Points:                             |   Actualpoints:                   
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Comment(by cypherpunks):

 Post by Paul, who still doesn't have a proper account:
 Been talking to Ian about this today here at Dagstuhl. I don't think all
 the effects of significantly shrinking the set of nodes that are ever
 chosen has been considered. If the network shrinks to c. 1/4 it's current
 size, this has the potential for tremendous psychological impact on users,
 relay volunteers, some adversaries, funders, etc. There is thus a big
 difference between switching a lot of nodes to be never chosen vs.
 changing the distributions to make them more rarely chosen. Instead of
 changing the fast flag, it would then make more sense to alter the
 bandwidth weighting. And the more gradual the change in probability of
 being chosen, the less any nodes will naturally count as the group that
 has been simply excluded. If performance is best served by more of a step
 function, then perhaps something in between will still significantly
 improve performance statistics without, e.g., resulting in graphs showing
 a 75% drop in the number of nodes with the fast flag when the change is
 rolled out.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1854#comment:54>
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