-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 08:10 PM 7/3/00 -0400, William Rowden wrote: > > ... >In the absence of a nym to which I can respond, here is my initial >public response (a question and an observation): > > 1. Should standards for reporting on the remailer network be part > of >or separate from standards on message transmission? > 2. Although they are not incorporated into the newsgroup and Web >statistics lists, three types of message volume statistics are >available via the "remailer-stats" request. > >Let me elaborate: > > 1. This Mixmaster protocol describes a message transfer protocol. >As such, it describes message creation, remailing, reassembly, >format (payload, algorithms, packets, encoding), delivery, and key >format. Should this remain the extent of the protocol? > >Version 3 *could* be extended. Note, for example, that the >statement above replaces "mail" with "message" to allow for non-SMTP >connections. In fact, though I'm not convinced of the causes, I'd >like to see version 3 test RProcess's hypotheses on reliability >(http://www.theinternet.cc/potatoware/PSKB-035.html). For example, >message delivery also doesn't have to remain one-at-a-time. >Similarly, the current _de facto_ statistics and configuration >reporting could be documented. > >This leads to my second response: > > 2. A message whose subject is "remailer-stats" (without the > quotes, >of course), when sent to a remailer, receives responses that look >like this: > > Number of messages per hour from Jul 2 22:00 to Jul 3 21:59 > > 22:00 ( 4) **** > 23:00 ( 4) **** > 00:00 ( 2) ** >[snip] > >or this: > > Number of messages in the past 24 hours: > 22h: Mix: 59 PGP: 42 [Pool size: 70] > 23h: Mix: 51 PGP: 45 [Pool size: 92] > 0h: Mix:1410 PGP: 689 [Pool size: 38] >[snip] > >or this: > > Messages Received Last Week: 14740 > >Consequently, this information *is* currently available, though not >documented in a protocol. >-- ... You could do it in a manner similar to the way you check the messages on a cell phone. On a cell phone, if the cell phone dials it's own number, then it goes to it's voice-mail box. If you made the remailer so that, in absence a forward-to message, it would reply with a recognizable format detailing all of the public information. You then make it so that it recognizes this format, and automatically diverts it to /dev/null, when it gets one itself. The reason for this last is, occassionally, someone will send a chained message, and forget to add the last hop. The last hop, and the second to last hop, would then play tennis with that message until one of the systems came down. Also, someone might intentionally send two such nodes a similar message, several times, as a form of DOS attack. Just a thought, Good luck, Sean -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.1 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQA/AwUBOWKi3JHDoiHtqFDZEQL7WgCfRnAEDREhXweO87ax9oSQ6s1Z+k4Anjbn rwUn8koKa883WdB9oGSceOp3 =GrC5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
