[Slightly OT] Theoretical classification of Tor

F. Fox kitsune.or at gmail.com
Tue Jun 17 01:34:39 UTC 2008


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Something I've been thinking about: On a theoretical basis, how would
Tor's architecture be classified?

Two extremes of the scale I'm talking about would be:

* Fully centralized, like plain ol' client/server;
* Fully decentralized, which Gnutella comes close to.

Now, Tor's data-carrying architecture is primarily decentralized -
anyone can run a node, and these nodes are chosen (more or less) at random.

However, the idea of directory authorities clouds this a bit* - and the
fact that there's a directory authority consensus system, clouds it even
further.

If there was a single directory authority, I'd consider the system to be
partially decentralized (or mixed): While the data infrastructure is
fully decentralized, all clients look to a central authority for a
listing, producing a single point of failure (or - for the paranoid -
manipulation).

With multiple directory authorities which must produce a consensus,
though, I don't know how this would go. It's even further from
centralization than the example above, but not fully decentralized.

Does anybody get what I'm saying? Sorry if it's just technobabble.


*: Please don't take this as trying to spread FUD - which some people
have done in the past when mentioning directory authorities. It's not my
intention.

- --
F. Fox
AAS, CompTIA A+/Network+/Security+
Owner of Tor node "kitsune"
http://fenrisfox.livejournal.com
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