Switching Tor relay speed

[Lexi Pimenidis]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 12:37:47PM CET, Scott Bennett wrote:

Hej,

> The way the code is written, a three- step process should do it by
> increments/decrements of 50% from the previous descriptor anyway to avoid
> having the new descriptor ignored by the authorities, IIRC.

That's a reason I can accept as given - even though I haven't checked the
dir-spec nor the implementation: if the servers ignore these minor changes,
it is indeed futile to send them.

However, it might be up to discussion, if this is good practice - but I doubt
that there is hardly enough empirical evidence to properly evaluate any
claim.

> There were obviously many reasons for the succession of directory protocol
> revisions, but performance and load on the tor network needed to handle
> directory information appear to have been central reasons.  (See, for
> example, the shuffling off of data not actually used for anything by tor
> into extra-info documents.) 

Agreed, any performance issue is important as only a performing network will
gain and keep a big number of users, which is guarantee for a decent level of
anonymity for all.

> However, it looks like the problems with data rate reporting will require
> yet another update to the protocol in order to fix them. :-(

I would go even further and claim that general research on directories for
anonymous networks as a total is an area where we're still lacking sufficient
research results; hence also reporting/measuring of data rate reporting.

Cheers,

	Lexi

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