[or-cvs] added section for Tor+Blossom desiderata

[goodell at seul.org]

Update of /home/or/cvsroot/tor/doc
In directory moria.mit.edu:/tmp/cvs-serv9126

Modified Files:
	dir-spec.txt 
Log Message:
added section for Tor+Blossom desiderata


Index: dir-spec.txt
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/or/cvsroot/tor/doc/dir-spec.txt,v
retrieving revision 1.6
retrieving revision 1.7
diff -u -d -r1.6 -r1.7
--- dir-spec.txt	24 Jan 2005 00:00:46 -0000	1.6
+++ dir-spec.txt	8 Feb 2005 16:53:18 -0000	1.7
@@ -169,6 +169,8 @@
 5. Regarding "Blossom: an unstructured overlay network for end-to-end
 connectivity."
 
+SECTION 5A: Blossom Architecture
+
 Define "transport domain" as a set of nodes who can all mutually name each
 other directly, using transport-layer (e.g. HOST:PORT) naming.
 
@@ -284,4 +286,70 @@
 policies carefully, with the knowledge that clients from potentially any
 transport domain could access that which is not explicitly restricted.
 
+SECTION 5B: Tor+Blossom desiderata
+
+The interests of Blossom would be best served by implementing the following
+modifications to Tor:
+
+I. CLIENTS
+
+Objectives: Ultimately, we want Blossom requests to be indistinguishable in
+format from non-Blossom .exit requests, i.e. hostname.forwarder.exit.
+
+Proposal: Blossom is a process that manipulates Tor, so it should be
+implemented as a Tor Control, extending control-spec.txt.  For each request,
+Tor uses the control protocol to ask the Blossom process whether it (the
+Blossom process) wants to build or assign a particular circuit to service the
+request.  Blossom chooses one of the following responses:
+
+a. (Blossom exit node, circuit cached) "use this circuit" -- provides a circuit
+ID
+
+b. (Blossom exit node, circuit not cached) "I will build one" -- provides a
+list of routers, gets a circuit ID.
+
+c. (Regular (non-Blossom) exit node) "No, do it yourself" -- provides nothing.
+
+II. ROUTERS
+
+Objectives: Blossom routers are like regular Tor routers, except that Blossom
+routers need these features as well:
+
+a. the ability to open peresistent connections,
+
+b. the ability to know whwther they should use a persistent connection to reach
+another router,
+
+c. the ability to define a set of routers to which to establish persistent
+connections, as readable from a configuration file, and
+
+d. the ability to tell a directory server that (1) it is Blossom-enabled, and
+(2) it can be reached by some set of routers to which it explicitly establishes
+persistent connections.
+
+Proposal: Address the aforementioned points as follows.
+
+a. need the ability to open a specified number of persistent connections.  This
+can be accomplished by implementing a generic should_i_close_this_conn() and
+which_conns_should_i_try_to_open_even_when_i_dont_need_them().
+
+b. The Tor design already supports this, but we must be sure to establish the
+persistent connections explicitly, re-establish them when they are lost, and
+not close them unnecessarily.
+
+c. We must modify Tor to add a new configuration option, allowing either (a)
+explicit specification of the set of routers to which to establish persistent
+connections, or (b) a random choice of some nodes to which to establish
+persistent connections, chosen from the set of nodes local to the transport
+domain of the specified directory server (for example).
+
+III. DIRSERVERS
+
+Objective: Blossom directory servers may provide extra
+fields in their network-status pages.  Blossom directory servers may
+communicate with Blossom clients/routers in nonstandard ways in addition to
+standard ways.
+
+Proposal: Geoff should be able to implement a directory server according to the
+Tor specification (dir-spec.txt).