[tor-bugs] #30196 [Core Tor/sbws]: Add the tor version to the sbws bandwidth file header

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#30196: Add the tor version to the sbws bandwidth file header
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 Reporter:  teor           |          Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement    |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium         |      Milestone:  sbws: 1.2.x-final
Component:  Core Tor/sbws  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal         |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                 |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                 |         Points:  1
 Reviewer:                 |        Sponsor:
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Comment (by irl):

 I had a discussion with juga in IRC, here are some things we discussed:

 * The need for the inline contact information becomes evident when we look
 at how much trouble we've had tracking down who runs the default bridges
 in Tor Browser #30121
 * Inline metadata is better than out-of-band metadata because it is
 archived by Tor Metrics along with the bandwidth measurement data
 * The need for AS as well as country allows us to correlate BGP events
 with bandwidth changes. Ideally we can know both the AS of the scanner and
 the target. Tor Metrics already knows the AS of the relay.
 * In some cases, the target is on a CDN, which means the AS may not be
 known in advance. In these cases we might choose to omit the AS number and
 instead use a user-assigned country code for the target.
 * We could assign QM-QZ (user-assigned codes not used elsewhere in Tor to
 my knowledge) to CDN providers but each new provider used would require a
 spec change, and external researchers would end up using whatever value
 and not being able to interop their data with ours if we clash.
 * We could use the OO escape code and build codes like "OOFastly" which is
 probably the more maintainable solution, but would require that parsers do
 not panic when they see >2 characters (I know the standard is known as
 alpha-2 but it isn't actually limited to 2 characters!)
 * We could use Tor's geoip database to resolve the IP address resolved via
 the same circuit of the CDN into a country/IP address to add to the
 measurements, but this may prove to be unreliable especially in the longer
 term as IPv4 exhaustion causes more and more IP address swapping about.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/30196#comment:3>
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