[tor-talk] Network diversity [was: Should I warn against Tor?]

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Mon Jul 8 08:34:33 UTC 2013


> From the paper by Murdoch and Zieliński [3]:
> [3]  http://www.freehaven.net/anonbib/#murdoch-pet2007
> “We suggest that existing models, based on Autonomous System (AS)
> diversity, do not properly take account of the fact that while, at
> the AS level abstraction, a path may have good administrative domain
> diversity, physically it could repeatedly pass through the same
> Internet eXchange (IX).”

It would be interesting to include a traceroute service in each node
such that path building might take into consideration such IX/AS
repetitions over the proposed full path. Note however that MPLS
routing used to engineer traffic schemes can hide the actual path
from traceroute (though mitigated by its usual use only within one AS).
And other than of geolocation, it's quite hard to align IX nodes with
traceroute data. Last, if the overall src and dst fall within purview of
your tapping GPA of choice the usual timing/counting shortcuts
apply.

It would be rather interesting to see if transiting the Tier-1's could
be avoided altogether by pathing circuits through the side peerings
that the lower tiers establish between themselves, as discovered by
said traceroute mechanism. Though that might work within a continent,
don't ever think it will get you between them safely... cable landings
are far too ripe, as is any model where a long haul fiber owner leases
out strands to multiple Tier-n's... that shared bundle terminates
somewhere, and often at many places along the way.

See NANOG for further Internet background.

[Somewhere in all of this there is something to be said for peer
owned p2p meshnets and co-op's...]


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