[tor-reports] Karsten's status report December 1--31

[Karsten Loesing]

Here are the top 5 five things I wanted to do in December:

> - Start sponsor F year 3.  Create tickets, and talk to developers to
> nail down what exactly was promised and what they are expected to deliver.

Done.  Talked to Roger and started discussions with responsible
developers for February deliverables.  Much more talking necessary in
January.

> - Help define network diversity metrics and develop tools to visualize
> current diversity and diversity over time.

Not done anything specifically for this one.

> - Finish evaluating ways to overcome problems with Maxmind's GeoIP
> database which started labeling Tor relays as country A1.

Done.  Tor versions 0.2.2.x and later now have updated GeoIP databases
without A1 country codes.  Updating takes 30--60 minutes per month,
because some steps are only semi-automated and require a human to make
sure not to screw up.  See #7863 for the latest update.

> - Have a short vacation before this December 24 thing.

Done.

> - Attend 29C3 in Hamburg.

Done.  Not much to report though.  Attended three talks and talked to an
excited volunteer about metrics work.

In addition to the tasks above, I worked on the following things:

- Looked into various Atlas/Compass/Onionoo issues and fixed some.

- Extended ExoneraTor to support IPv6 addresses.

- Started fixing Onionoo's GeoIP database in the same way as Tor's GeoIP
database.  This still needs some more polishing before it can be deployed.

- Deployed Will's Torperf replacement/extension that uses PhantomJS to
download the most popular websites over Tor.  This still needs more
work.  This is a February deliverable for sponsor F year 3.

And here are the top 5 five things I want to do in January, from most
important to least important:

- Continue sponsor F year 3.  Create tickets, and talk to developers to
nail down what exactly was promised and what they are expected to
deliver.  Get the February milestone planned, ideally by mid-January.

- Make Torperf results more realistic -- real web pages average 320KB
and contain multiple components.  This is sponsor F year 3 item 8 that
is due February 28.

- Continue working with the Shadow and ExperimenTor developers to help
them improve their ability to accurately simulate Tor networks. And do
that for the Deterlab folks too.  This is sponsor F year 3 item 3 that
is due February 28.

- Continue working with external researchers (including other groups
getting funding, like the NRL group) so their Tor results are more
likely to be useful in practice.  This is sponsor F year 3 item 4 that
is due February 28.

- Try to plan the October milestone of sponsor F year 3, and coordinate
incomplete year 2 deliverables and non-deliverable tasks that we should
do anyway in the year 3 timeframe.