[tor-relays] Measuring the Accuracy of Tor Relays' Advertised Bandwidths

[Roger Dingledine]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 10:18:24AM -0400, Rob Jansen wrote:
> I am planning on performing an experiment on the Tor network to try to gauge the accuracy of the advertised bandwidths that relays report in their server descriptors. Briefly, the experiment involves running a speed test on every relay for a short time (about 20 seconds).

Thanks Rob!

For context, I asked Rob to do this experiment, because we know that
the current bandwidth authority design is mis-measuring relays, but we
don't know how wrong things are. Giving every relay a short burst of
load should give us some insight into how much traffic that relay can
handle, which will in turn tell us how much room for improvement there
is in our bandwidth estimation.

And as a bonus, for this one time, fast relays should actually be
consistently seen as fast, and the Tor network should be better balanced
and the user experience should be better. If we like how it works,
our follow-up task will be to change things so we get this result all
the time. :)

Woo,
--Roger