[tor-bugs] #5956 [Tor]: Thresholds of nodes to build circuits should be tunable and maybe consider weights too

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#5956: Thresholds of nodes to build circuits should be tunable and maybe consider
weights too
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 Reporter:  nickm                                      |          Owner:  mikeperry         
     Type:  defect                                     |         Status:  assigned          
 Priority:  critical                                   |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.4.x-final
Component:  Tor                                        |        Version:                    
 Keywords:  maybe-proposal tor-client MikePerry201301  |         Parent:  #5456             
   Points:                                             |   Actualpoints:                    
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Comment(by arma):

 Early thoughts from skimming ticket:

 A) We saw a variety of bugs in testingtornetworks when combined with
 raising these thresholds like we did in 0.2.3. They had to do with not
 retrying certain things quickly, and combined with not being willing to
 build circuits until you have enough things, caused Tors to be dead in the
 water for long periods of time before they start. I'm not sure if any of
 these bugs matter in non-testingtornetwork scenarios, but maybe they do.
 So I'd be wary of cranking up the numbers any more without further
 investigation.

 B) That said, my gut is to agree with the "it matters even more now that
 we have directory guards" point. Maybe we should require some bigger
 thresholds before we're willing to choose guards? I guess in the past we
 fetched dir info before picking guards, but now there are more chickens-
 and-eggs to consider. I begin to wonder if our switch to directory guards
 was premature?

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5956#comment:14>
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