[tor-relays] Bridge Authority closure

[Tim Wilson-Brown - teor]

> On 21 Jul 2016, at 14:17, Sebastian Hahn <sebastian at torproject.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 21 Jul 2016, at 05:20, Me <info at gumbyzee.torzone.net> wrote:
>> So what are we going to do when Green shuts down the Bridge Authority server next month? Will it have a serious effect, or will there be any apparent issues or slowdowns?
> 
> We'll have to act before that. We're currently looking for
> a new operator for the bridge authority and a suitable hosting
> location, which we will want to include in Tor releases asap.
> For a while we will feed the data from the two concurrently
> running bridge authorities to the bridge database for
> distribution to users, then when Tonga (Lucky's auth) is shut
> down the new one will have taken over. We will lose the data
> about all bridges that aren't updated after the time Tonga is
> shut off. This means fewer bridges for bridge db to give out and
> potentially a drop in counted (not necessarily actual) bridge
> users of Tor.

Old bridges will continue to function after the old authority is shut down, regardless of whether they are updated to the new Tor release. So existing users of those bridges will be ok.

Old bridges won't be able to send their details to the new bridge authority. So a Tor update is required on bridges, so they send their details to the new bridge authority. Then they can be given out to users.

Also, old Tor clients won't be able to get updated bridge descriptors from the new authority, but as far as I know, bridge descriptor updates aren't essential for clients to continue to use a bridge. (I may be wrong about this.)

Tim

Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)

teor2345 at gmail dot com
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