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From: Mike Fikuart <mike@fikuart.com>
To: "tor-talk@lists.torproject.org" <tor-talk@lists.torproject.org>
Thread-Topic: Scaling Tor
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Subject: [tor-talk] Scaling Tor
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Hi Tor-Talk,

I am doing an MSc in Telecommunications and Network at City University, =
London.  For my dissertation I am looking at the limitations of scaling =
Tor up and how the limits could be overcome and should state that I am =
not a programmer, though would love to be involved in Tor=92s progress.

I=92m not sure if I am confusing Authority Server and Directory =
Authority and Directory Server or if they are all one and the same...

Firstly, in the original Tor documentation (Tor-Design 18/05/2004) =
initial =93theoretical=94 limits were stated that Tor could operate, =
then three, but as many as, up to nine DA=92s (Directory Authorities); =
however I note from the documentation you have gone through various =
version releases; have introduced directory caches etc to mitigate the =
overloading of the DA=92s and now have ten DA=92s operating and overall =
improved network performance. =20

Later (section 8) "Early experiences: Tor in the Wild=94 states initial =
expectations "of the network to support a few hundred nodes and 10,000 =
users before we=92re forced to become more distributed=94.  This =
reference was made to the =93clique topology=94 and =93full-visibility =
directories=94, yet you now operate almost 6,000 relays and around 2.25M =
users (directly connected).  Have you fundamentally changed the topology =
or have you found gains in the reporting of relays for form the =
consensus (or elsewhere) to allow this scale factor?

Two of the bottle necks identified in dir-spec (section 0.3 Some =
Remaining Questions) are that having every client know about every =
relay; and to have every Directory Cache to know about every router =
won=92t scale ad infinitum.=20

A question raised in Tor-Design (section 9) is, "if clients can no =
longer have a complete picture of the network, how can they perform =
discovery while preventing attackers from manipulating or exploiting =
gaps in their knowledge?=94.  If the network were to be considered to =
scale up to significant number of all Internet users, could it be that =
the Directory Authority(Ies) release (to Directory Caches and clients) a =
even random sample of relays/nodes from the FULL set of nodes, such that =
the randomness of the path selection is still maintained.  The random =
selection could be sampled on a per client basis with enough of a sample =
as is currently downloaded (6000 relays).  What this means is that each =
client (or possibly groupings of clients) is getting a different =93view=94=
 of the network, but there would need to be a scaling down from the full =
set to the sample set at some point before the client. =20

I have looked over the documentation for the path selection, directory =
protocol and the consensus, but have not documented the timing of the =
exchanges of communications.  I imagine that this is an area that could =
present a limit if scaled up.  What are the current areas that present =
limitations for large scaling up?

I have been able to access most of the relevant documentation through =
the https://www.torproject.org/docs/documentation.html.en but would =
appreciate it if there are any other repositories of info.  As mentioned =
at the start, I am not a programmer so the code base is meaningless to =
me :(

A small note; it would be useful for the documentation to be dated (and =
reversioner with dates) to indicate the freshness and relevance of the =
data.  I am aware that this may be a resource issue.

I appreciate your support with the network and hope to be able to =
contribute more in the future.

Yours sincerely
=20
Mike Fikuart IEng MIET
=20
Mobile: 07801 070580
Office: 020 33840275
Blog: mikefikuart
Skype: mikefikuart
Twitter: mikefikuart
LinkedIn: mikefikuart


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