[tor-dev] Reducing initial onion descriptor upload delay (down to 0s?)

[meejah]

Ivan Markin <twim at riseup.net> writes:

> IMO an onion service should publish its first descriptor instantly. If
> something happens afterwards and one has to fix the descriptor - deal
> with it with backoff/delay to prevent DoS on HSDirs.

+1

txtorcon only ever waits for the first descriptor to be published (since
at this point I presume the service is at least theoretically reachable)
before alerting the caller that the service is "ready".

>From a controller perspective it would also be nice to have
more-granular feedback (maybe an HS_DESC event that indicates "waiting X
seconds to do anything at all with this one") so that e.g. a GUI can
make a nice progress bar that doesn't just sit there (i.e. if tor tells
me that it will be 5 seconds before we even try anything, I can provide
feedback every 1 second if I like).

Perhaps you could achieve "less load on HSdirs" but preserve "at least
one descriptor is uploaded right away" by selecting N random delays,
where one lucky HSDir gets a 0 second delay and the other 5 get
something random between 1 and 30 (or whatever).

p.s. I don't view ADD_ONION as being useful *only* for temporary
services -- it's also the good API for applications that want to manage
their own private-key material. For these, they might like to know when
*all* descriptors are uploaded, etc.

-- 
meejah