[tor-talk] What are use cases made unpleasant by Tor's speed?

[Griffin Boyce]

Hey Virgil,

   I'd say that the issue with Tor's speed is one of inconsistency, 
rather than outright slowness.

   Give you an example:  I was watching a friend set up a new laptop, and 
she elected to fetch drivers direct from the manufacturer's website.  So 
someone downloads a few dozen files with the Tor Browser.  Pretty common 
stuff.  She ran into issues of speed -- at one point all pending 
downloads failed -- but for the most part the speed ranged from 200kbps 
to 1mbps.  There are circuits where the connection slows to Pyongyang 
levels, but for the most part Tor is pretty solid.

   Tor excludes relays that have less than X speed over N period of time, 
but perhaps the threshhold for X should be raised and length N should be 
lowered.  My theory is that this would solve many of the "speed issues" 
that people experience.  Perhaps try simulating these differences with 
Shadow and report back your findings?

best,
Griffin