[tor-relays] Using the name of a named node

[Nick Mathewson]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 8:37 AM, Konstantinos Asimakis
<inshame at gmail.com> wrote:
> https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/A84D7DF9D58E0FAFF8CCC06A6A49DD96BD1DFC13
> https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/12404BB1BB4F09CA65B76D77F347BC0D79CB7BA3
>
> How is this possible? I though that if you try to take the name of an
> unnamed node, your node switched to Unnamed or something like that
> automatically.
>
> Does the named flag prohibit other nodes from taking that name, or is it
> merely enabling clients to refer to you by name unambiguously?
>

The latter.  Any number of routers can claim the same name; at most
one can be Named. If you try to refer to a router by name, then you
should get the Named one. If there is only one router with a given
name, then you should get that one regardless of whether it's named,
so long as it isn't Unnamed.

If you're curious about the details, have a look at section 6.2 of
dir-spec.txt (which should probably be better written; I found it
pretty confusing when I looked just now), and at
node_get_by_nickname() in src/or/nodelist.c in the Tor source.

best wishes,
-- 
Nick