[tor-bugs] #8532 [Tor]: Make TestingTorNetwork produce consensuses quicker

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#8532: Make TestingTorNetwork produce consensuses quicker
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 Reporter:  ln5                        |          Owner:                    
     Type:  defect                     |         Status:  new               
 Priority:  normal                     |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.5.x-final
Component:  Tor                        |        Version:                    
 Keywords:  SponsorF20131031 tor-auth  |         Parent:                    
   Points:                             |   Actualpoints:                    
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Comment(by ln5):

 In order for clients and relays to be able to postpone the first
 consensus download for about 10s (using
 Testing*ConsensusDownloadSchedule), run_scheduled_events() needs to
 call update_networkstatus_downloads() more often than once per minute
 (CHECK_DESCRIPTOR_INTERVAL).

 Would letting it run every second be scary in any way? I'm thinking
 about things like hosing the tor doing this and also about hammering
 other tors for network status documents.

 In update_networkstatus_downloads(), dir auths call
 update_v2_networkstatus_cache_downloads() which currently won't do
 anything with a higher frequency than ten minutes
 (AUTHORITY_NS_CACHE_INTERVAL). That looks safe to me.

 Then, every kind of tor invokes
 update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads() which seems to have a few
 guards -- time_to_download_next_consensus[i],
 download_status_is_ready() and
 connection_dir_get_by_purpose_and_resource().

 To conclude, I don't see that it would be harmful to have
 update_networkstatus_downloads() being invoked every second but would
 really like to hear from other people on this.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8532#comment:3>
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