[tor-bugs] #5048 [Tor Relay]: cbtmintimeout should have a lower maximum

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#5048: cbtmintimeout should have a lower maximum
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 Reporter:  nickm      |          Owner:                    
     Type:  defect     |         Status:  new               
 Priority:  normal     |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.3.x-final
Component:  Tor Relay  |        Version:                    
 Keywords:             |         Parent:                    
   Points:             |   Actualpoints:                    
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Comment(by arma):

 Replying to [ticket:5048 nickm]:
 > cbtinitialtimeout also could use more sane cap.  wanoskarnet suggests
 120 seconds.

 That seems low to me. The CBT_MAX_TIMEOUT_INITIAL_VALUE is a constraint on
 what the consensus can tell clients who haven't calculated their cbt yet
 to start out at. For the current Tor network, as currently deployed, 60
 seconds is probably conservatively high. But what if you deployed a Tor
 network on a pile of satellite modems, and it had a lot of load? You might
 want to tell your clients that they should pick a really high timeout
 while they're trying to figure out what their timeout is.

 I guess this issue exposes the question of how much we should enforce mins
 and maxes on consensus parameters. We started the process when we realized
 that certain values would cause Tor to crash. Then we followed through by
 assigning *every* consensus param a min and a max, just to be thorough. I
 still tend toward the "if it wouldn't actually cause Tor to die, it's a
 valid value" camp.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5048#comment:2>
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