[tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays

[Scott Bennett]

     On Fri, 27 Jul 2012 01:23:57 -0400 grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>> 4) What exactly do we mean by diversity?
>>
>> I would look at this almost entirely from a jurisdictional and ISP level.  I
>> believe the biggest "sudden impact" threats to the tor network are going to
>> be from legal changes (jurisdictional, i.e. "save the children, nullroute
>> the nodes") and local business policy changes ("sorry tor customers, no more
>> tor egress from our DC due to complaints").
>
>I'm not sure which thread I mentioned this on so I'll put it here to be sure.
>I think one main thing needed is a project to catalog all the current
>exits as to their diversity...
>Box: ISP/hoster, AS, datacenter, country, upstream AS/Tier-n path,
>relay-operator
>Relay-operator: country
>
>Without that, seems like placing nodes amounts to, 'Well,
>we don't have any in Iran, let's go there'. If it turns out that
>IP is more or less fed as a courtesy from UAE across the
>gulf, there's not much gain. Repeat analysis for any of the
>above parameters.
>
>More nodes are probably good, just not all as USA, Equinix,
>Level3, with whatever hoster has a rack in all the DC's.

     I agree completely.  But I would also like to add that, aside from
Brasil, most of South America is still dark.  Central America is not
much better either.  Many of those states are not especially cooperative
with each other, politically speaking, yet they all need the benefits of
commerce associated with the Internet.  That combination strikes me as
beneficial to placement of tor relays in as many of those countries as
possible.
     Much of Africa may be worth closer examination for the same reasons.
     We really need to keep political diversity in view, especially given
the large fractions of the tor network currently concentrated inside a
mere handful of politically allied states.  The Dictator of the U.S., for
example, has already made the threat of shutting down the entire U.S.
portion of the Internet, including relaying between other countries,
which would certainly have a severely disruptive effect upon tor users
all around the globe were it to happen under today's distribution of tor
relays.  Even more drastic would be if any of, for example, the U.K.,
France, Germany, or the Netherlands were to follow suit.  Having countries
like Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador more tor-populated looks to
me like a good thing.
     Another point I'd like to make is that I don't see why having one
100 MB/s relay is somehow better than having ten 10 MB/s relays or 20
5 MB/s relays.  The superhigh-speed relays push operating system limits
on the number of connections.  Due to tor's design, distributing the
workload of such relays across multiple CPU cores is problematic.  Olaf
Selke got around that problem by running four nodes on a quad-core
machine with two IP addresses, but that meant that each node usually ran
at less than 15 MB/s.  For a superfast setup today, it might mean running
multiple 25 MB/s nodes in similar fashion to what Olaf did, rather than
a single 100 MB/s node.  The benefit to tor users would seem to me to
be the same either way, but the multinode method would not satisfy the
demand of the funding source, as I understood it.  Either way, though,
the operating system limits may place keep a lid on the actual tor
capacity of a very fast setup.
     From an infrastructure standpoint, I acknowledge that there can be
problems in setting up really fast relays in Latin American countries.
However, adding a few relays on the order of 500 - 5,000 KB/s in each
Latin American country could probably be done, even if it meant they
could only be set up in national capitals, which are mostly
megalopolises of several million people, and might involve making
special arrangements with the ISPs.  Other major cities in some
countries may also have the infrastructure to make moderately fast
relays possible.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
**********************************************************************
* Internet:       bennett at cs.niu.edu                              *
*--------------------------------------------------------------------*
* "A well regulated and disciplined militia, is at all times a good  *
* objection to the introduction of that bane of all free governments *
* -- a standing army."                                               *
*    -- Gov. John Hancock, New York Journal, 28 January 1790         *
**********************************************************************