[tor-relays] Questions about consensus votes

[Tobias Höller]

Hi,

I have only recently started operating relays 
(Family:008196DC449482C73CFA9712445223917F760921) and have some trouble 
with reliably getting the "Fast" and "HSDir" flags for my relays. Right 
now they regularly obtain and loose these flags and I would like them to 
be more stable To figure out what was going wrong, I took a look at the 
archived votes at 
https://collector.torproject.org/archive/relay-descriptors/votes/
Unfortunately, I still don't understand why some things are happening, 
so I'm hoping you can help me out:

1. The "Fast" flag is assigned by either measurements (if the DirAuth is 
also a Bandwidth Auth) or the reported bandwidth. On my relays I noticed 
that if I set the "BandwidthRate" close to the fast threshold (105KB/s) 
I would not get the fast flag, unless I configure a much higher 
bandwidth burst rate (>5MB/s). Even more confusing, different bandwidth 
auths seem to require different burst rates. While for example Moria1 
started voting me fast with a Bandwidth Burst rate of 5Mbit/s, maatuska 
did not do so until I increased the BandwidthBurst to 100Mbit/s (my 
complete internet uplink). What I'd like to know: Is that something that 
only affects me or have you also experienced it? And are there any 
recommendations how high the bandwidth burst should at least be compared 
to the desired bandwidth rate?

2. I am confused about the HSDir flag: According to 
https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/dir-spec.txt#n2500 it 
should require the relay to be fast+stable+ 
uptime>MinUptimeHidServDirectoryV2 (by default 96 hours). So, if an 
authority votes my relay to be Running+Stable+Fast for 100 consecutive 
votes, it should vote for "HSDir" in the last 4 votes, right?. Because 
moria1 for example, votes my relays to be fast+stable+running 
constantly, but never votes for the HSDir flag.
Is there another condition for becoming HSDir that I am not aware of, or 
can you think of an other reason why this is happening?

Lastly, I'd be curious to learn if I am the only operator who has 
trouble to maintain flags on their relays, or if you have also 
experienced similar problems to mine. If yes, how did you solve them.

kind regards
Tobias

-- 
DI Tobias Höller
Institute of Networks and Security
Johannes Kepler University Linz
Altenbergerstraße 69
4040 Linz