[tor-relays] Tor bandwidth scanner "longclaw" slow to the US West Coast

[Neel Chauhan]

Hi,

I believe the Tor bandwidth scanner nicknamed "longclaw" is measuring 
relays in the US West Coast worse than other bandwidth scanners in North 
America. This happens on multiple ISPs, both ones I have and ones I 
don't.

This includes two Tor exit instances on a dedicated server hosted in Los 
Angeles on Psychz Networks (AS40676):

https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/156AAC3FAD1ACC8906316519DCB444B8C77E4EBF
https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/A69CEB30328B1E85C6B167FECAF2F509CBD9517F

And two Tor non-exit instances on a home server in Seattle on Wave 
Broadband (AS11404), using a symmetrical Gigabit link:

https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/B0F9BA27944FA59E3B1A182208FF7C0CFF5497B2
https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/DB710B14D7329B7289CFCC547F48EF53F812C40D

The consensus weight values from longclaw are much lower than other 
North American bandwidth scanners, according to 
https://consensus-health.torproject.org/.

This also affects other relays/ISPs on the West Coast US/Canada, such as 
Emerald Onion, AT&T U-verse, Sonic.net, and QuadraNet. The same 
ISPs/hosts in the East Coast aren't affected.

This discrepancy in the measurement disproportionately favors European 
and East Coast US/Canada relays at the expense of West Coast relays, 
centralizing the Tor network even further than it already was. This 
wasn't an issue in the past, even as early as a few months ago. It only 
started appearing around June.

Is anyone else hosting West Coast relays having this issue? Is 
"longclaw" actually measuring bandwidth from Europe? If so, WHY?

I got in contact with "longclaw"'s admin and he wasn't too helpful.

Best,

Neel Chauhan

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https://www.neelc.org/