[metrics-bugs] #25799 [Metrics]: Utilize all Onionoo instances

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#25799: Utilize all Onionoo instances
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 Reporter:  iwakeh       |          Owner:  metrics-team
     Type:  enhancement  |         Status:  new
 Priority:  High         |      Milestone:
Component:  Metrics      |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal       |     Resolution:
 Keywords:               |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:               |         Points:
 Reviewer:               |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by karsten):

 Wait, I think it's not that the case that RS only requests data from the
 main Onionoo instance. IIUC, onionoo.tpo sometimes goes to omeiense and
 sometimes to oo-hetzner-03. Or rather, it goes to one of the several
 caches which in turn use both backends. The effect is that some requests
 made by RS are answered by the first instance, directly or indirectly, and
 some by the next. This switch may even happen in the middle of a user
 session.

 Regarding your second suggestion to have RS fetch data from several
 instances, I think that wouldn't scale. Remember that it's really the
 clients/browsers making those requests. So, basically, that would double
 the number of requests.

 Regarding your first suggestion, I don't really know how the DNS round-
 robin thing works or how we would change that to detect stale data. It
 might be that this requires some programming/configuration effort, too.

 What else could we do? How about we teach Onionoo instances to detect when
 their data has become stale. In that case they could check whether other
 instances have more recent data and reply with redirects to other
 instances until their data is not stale anymore.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25799#comment:1>
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