[tor-bugs] #29330 [Metrics/Website]: Do something with advertised bandwidth distribution graphs

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#29330: Do something with advertised bandwidth distribution graphs
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     Reporter:  karsten          |      Owner:  metrics-team
         Type:  enhancement      |     Status:  new
     Priority:  Medium           |  Milestone:
    Component:  Metrics/Website  |    Version:
     Severity:  Normal           |   Keywords:
Actual Points:                   |  Parent ID:
       Points:                   |   Reviewer:
      Sponsor:                   |
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 We currently have two graphs on advertised bandwidth distribution on Tor
 Metrics, [https://metrics.torproject.org/advbwdist-perc.html Advertised
 bandwidth distribution] and [https://metrics.torproject.org/advbwdist-
 relay.html Advertised bandwidth of n-th fastest relays].

 Unfortunately, the aggregation code that produces the data behind these
 graphs has always been somewhat painful to maintain. It was never written
 for the long term, it was rather a one-off analysis that we then made
 available on Tor Metrics. And now it's blocking a refactoring project
 where we want to share code between modules (#28342). This is not a good
 situation to be in.

 We discussed this briefly in Brussels, and I put some more thoughts into
 this today. Basically, I can see four ways for moving forward from here:

  - Retain: We accept that this code is hard to maintain, but we retain it.
 We exclude the module from the refactoring project and keep it as legacy
 module. This seems like an ugly solution from a bit-rot perspective,
 unless we're only doing it for a limited time before removing the graphs,
 in which case this could work.
  - Rewrite: We rewrite this module by designing a new database schema that
 is more flexible than the current approach. This is an awful amount of
 work, and we should only do it if we really think that these graphs are
 useful and will stay around for a long time.
  - Remove: We remove the graph, because we don't see the need for it
 anymore. We can do this with a few weeks of warning, and we can archive
 the .csv files and graphs and put them into an attic kind of thing just
 like we're planning to do with Tor Messenger graphs (#26030).
  - Replace: We replace these two graphs with two that are much easier to
 provide, namely with consensus weight distribution graphs. I'm going to
 attach two samples shortly. The code changes are almost trivial, except
 that the resulting code will be much easier to maintain regarding the
 refactoring project mentioned earlier.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/29330>
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