[tor-bugs] #12538 [Tor]: A relay is automatically a dir cache

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#12538: A relay is automatically a dir cache
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     Reporter:  cypherpunks  |      Owner:
         Type:  enhancement  |     Status:  new
     Priority:  normal       |  Milestone:
    Component:  Tor          |    Version:  Tor: unspecified
   Resolution:               |   Keywords:  tor-relay
Actual Points:               |  Parent ID:
       Points:               |
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Comment (by nickm):

 It's easier to have all relays be caches than to have all guards be
 caches: until now, there is nothing in Tor (AFAIK) where a relay behaves
 differently depending on any flag it has been assigned in any consensus.
 If we say "be a dir cache if you're a guard", then we need to consider
 cases where the client realizes that a relay is a guard before the relay
 itself realizes, and so on.

 (For one particularly hairy case: imagine that a negative feedback loop is
 created, where the extra burden of being a directory cache lowers a
 relay's visible bandwidth, so it is no longer a guard, so it loses the
 guard flag, so its visible bandwidth increases, etc etc.)

 So I think "all servers cache" is a better model than "all guards cache."

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/12538#comment:3>
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