[or-cvs] r18154: {website} import the EverybodyARelay faq entry from the wiki (website/trunk/en)

[arma at seul.org]

Author: arma
Date: 2009-01-17 12:35:17 -0500 (Sat, 17 Jan 2009)
New Revision: 18154

Modified:
   website/trunk/en/faq.wml
Log:
import the EverybodyARelay faq entry from the wiki


Modified: website/trunk/en/faq.wml
===================================================================
--- website/trunk/en/faq.wml	2009-01-17 13:34:47 UTC (rev 18153)
+++ website/trunk/en/faq.wml	2009-01-17 17:35:17 UTC (rev 18154)
@@ -53,6 +53,12 @@
 <li><a href="#KeyManagement">Tell me about all the keys Tor uses.</a></li>
 </ul>
 
+<p>Alternate designs that we don't do (yet):</p>
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#EverybodyARelay">You should make every Tor user be a
+relay.</a></li>
+</ul>
+
 <p>Abuse</p>
 <ul>
 <li><a href="#Criminals">Doesn't Tor enable criminals to do bad things?</a></li>
@@ -726,6 +732,77 @@
 
 <hr />
 
+<a id="EverybodyARelay"></a>
+<h3><a class="anchor" href="#EverybodyARelay">You should make every Tor
+user be a relay.</a></h3>
+
+<p>
+Requiring every Tor user to be a relay would help with scaling the
+network to handle all our users, and [#RelayAnonymity running a Tor
+relay may help your anonymity]. However, many Tor users cannot be good
+relays -- for example, some Tor clients operate from behind restrictive
+firewalls or could be subject to penalties for relaying traffic (e.g.,
+potentially questionable exit connections, encrypted connections, or any
+connections at all). Providing service to these clients is a critical
+part of providing effective anonymity for everyone, since many Tor users
+are subject to these or similar constraints and including these clients
+increases the size of the anonymity set.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That said, we do want to encourage Tor users to run relays, so what we
+really want to do is simplify the process of setting up and maintaining
+a relay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There are five steps we need to address before we can do this though:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+First, we need to make Tor stable as a relay on all common operating
+systems. [:TheOnionRouter/WindowsBufferProblems:We haven't achieved this
+on Windows XP yet, and we need your help.]
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Second, we need easy configuration -- requiring users to edit text files
+is bad for adoption. The [http://vidalia-project.net/ Vidalia project]
+is making great progress on this part.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Third, Tor needs to do more tasks automatically: we need it to
+automatically detect appropriate bandwidth, help you with opening ports
+in your firewall, et cetera. We need to let people rate-limit outside
+connections without limiting their own connections -- this is hard because
+Tor puts traffic from different people on the same TCP stream, so we can't
+tell whether we should read it off the network without first reading it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fourth, we need to work on scalability, both of the network (how
+to stop requiring that all Tor relays be able to connect to all
+Tor relays) and of the directory (how to stop requiring that all
+Tor users know about all Tor relays). Changes like this can have
+large impact on potential and actual anonymity. See Section 5 of the
+[https://www.torproject.org/svn/trunk/doc/design-paper/challenges.pdf
+Challenges] paper for details.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fifth, we might need some sort of incentive scheme to encourage people
+to relay traffic for others, and/or to become exit nodes. Here are our
+[https://www.torproject.org/svn/trunk/doc/contrib/incentives.txt early
+thoughts on Tor incentives].
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Please help on all of these!
+</p>
+
+<hr />
+
 <a id="Criminals"></a>
 <h3><a class="anchor" href="#Criminals">Doesn't Tor enable criminals to do bad
 things?</a></h3>