[tor-relays] asymmetry in connections

[Ivan Markin]

Rana:
> On one of my relays I have 389 inbound, 38 outbound connections and 15
> circuits
>  
> What's the connection between these 3 numbers and why such asymmetry in
> inbound and outbound?

I don't think that there is something meaningful hidden here. This is
because TCP+TLS connections are bidirectional and it doesn't matter who
started them (sent SYN). As circuits are multiplexed over TLS, it
doesn't always reveal bijective dependency between number of circuits
and number of TLS connections. Except that there are constraints:

    o  there is ~1 circuit (not client ones) per TLS connection if a
relay joined the network recently
    o  one has ~7100 [number of relays] TLS connections if their relay
is up for quite some time
    o  TLS connection is not going to terminate if no circuits left on it*

[*] I may be wrong about it. It holds true from my experience.
--
Ivan Markin