On 6/19/12 2:30 AM, Jacob Appelbaum wrote: >> 146 Add new flag to reflect long-term stability >> >> From time to time we get the idea of having clients ship with a >> reasonably recent consensus (or a list of directory mirrors), >> so instead of bootstrapping from one of the authorities, they >> can bootstrap from a regular directory cache. The problem here >> is that by the time the client is run, most of the directory >> mirrors will be down or will have changed their IP. This >> proposal tries to address that. >> >> It needs analysis based on behavior of actual routers on the >> network to see whether it could work, and what parameters might >> work. >> >> Nevertheless, we should really do something like this, so that >> we can ship a list of initial directory mirrors with Tor >> (possibly via the "fallback consensus" deisgn), so that new >> bootstrapping Tor clients don't all hammer the directory >> authorities. (6/2012) > > I almost wonder if the guard flag is essentially the same set of > constraints? I think we should discuss this at the TorDev in Italy if > possible...
A part from the performance reason that's also a censorship-bypass reason. For example currently in China all the TorDA are fully "IP Filtered" ( not even ping are allowed to those IP addresses). That means that even if we found a way to fuck the GFW active-probe-filter for a while, the Tor clients already existing and residing in china would not be able to connect because they cannot reach the "software-hard-coded" tor directory authority. Imho it would be also required to consider, within that proposal, a way to "dynamically" append the latests network-map available when a user is going to download Tor. That way when a release X is done, it automatically get the map of the build-time. But if everytime a user download the software, the latests network map is populated, it would increase the chance to bypass static ip filters. -naif _______________________________________________ tor-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
