[tor-talk] Shutting down the relay-search service by the end of the year

[Karsten Loesing]

Dear talkers,

I'm thinking about shutting down a service that is currently running as
part of the metrics website:

  https://metrics.torproject.org/relay-search.html

If you have never heard of this service, great!  Please stop reading and
carry on.

If you have used this service in the past, please let me know if
switching to one of the alternative services would be a major pain for
you.  Alternatives are:

  https://atlas.torproject.org/

  http://globe.rndm.de/

The main feature that these two alternatives are missing is that they
don't tell you about relays that have been offline for *more* than a week.

Also note that there's ExoneraTor which tells you whether a given IP
address was a Tor relay, which goes through the entire descriptor
archives since October 2007:

  https://exonerator.torproject.org/

The major argument against keeping the relay-search service is that it's
one of the few remaining things that require us to keep a full database
of relays on our already overloaded metrics machine.

My current thinking is that the relay-search service is only used,
because it's linked from various websites including Tor Weather and the
Relay Configuration Instructions on Debian/Ubuntu.  Those links could be
changed to Atlas or Globe easily.

If there are no good reasons for keeping the relay-search service, I'm
going to shut it down by the end of the year.

All the best,
Karsten