[tor-bugs] #32720 [Core Tor/Tor]: How much bandwidth does a user use to bootstrap and maintain dir info? How has that changed over time?

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#32720: How much bandwidth does a user use to bootstrap and maintain dir info? How
has that changed over time?
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     Reporter:  arma          |      Owner:  (none)
         Type:  task          |     Status:  new
     Priority:  Medium        |  Milestone:
    Component:  Core Tor/Tor  |    Version:
     Severity:  Normal        |   Keywords:
Actual Points:                |  Parent ID:
       Points:                |   Reviewer:
      Sponsor:                |
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 We've gone through a series of iterations on the mechanisms for fetching
 directory info, culminating in these last two:

 * iteration n-1: "start by fetching a new consensus and all the
 microdescriptors, and then fetch a new consensus every few hours plus
 fetch new microdescriptors as needed"

 * iteration n: like that but use consensus diffs when possible for the new
 consensus documents

 (and we compress some of these steps on the wire)

 How many actual bytes is this right now? For the current network, how much
 are we saving with 'iteration n' over 'n-1'? It would be awesome to track
 this number over time, so we put ourselves in a position to be able to
 notice when the load gets higher than we expected.

 I ask because we have a large org asking us about the bandwidth tradeoffs
 of adding 7 figures, 8 figures, or 9 figures of users into the Tor
 network, and all I have as an answer is my intuitive guess of "about a
 megabyte per user per day".

 I cc komlo since maybe they already computed this metric as part of
 analyzing related work for walking onions.

 And I choose the Tor component since the metrics folks will be happy to
 graph numbers if the network team exports the numbers, but probably they
 have no plans to calculate things themselves.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32720>
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