[tor-bugs] #16844 [Tor]: Duplicate directory fetches when on high-latency connection

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#16844: Duplicate directory fetches when on high-latency connection
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 Reporter:  arma        |          Owner:
     Type:  defect      |         Status:  needs_review
 Priority:  High        |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.9.x-final
Component:  Tor         |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal      |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tor-client  |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:              |         Points:
  Sponsor:              |
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Comment (by yawning):

 Replying to [comment:9 arma]:
 > How about if we disable the stream timeouts for begindir requests?
 >
 > Originally the stream timeouts were there to handle broken exit relays
 that e.g. don't have enough sockets, have broken dns resolvers, are
 censored from reaching the destination, etc. The goal was to dump the
 whole circuit, and try a new one (probably with a new exit). But for
 begindir requests, there should be a lot less variance between relays.

 Sockets/file descriptors on the other end are a finite resource and I
 don't feel particularly warm/fuzzy about connections that linger around
 for a long time (think Slowloris), especially given that we are shifting
 to making every Guard able to serve directory information, and there are
 probably Guards that are running on resource constrained hardware.

 Relaxing the timeout may be ok, removing it entirely feels like a bad
 idea.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/16844#comment:11>
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