Proposal 145: Separate "suitable as a guard" from "suitable as a new guard"

[Nick Mathewson]

Filename: 145-newguard-flag.txt
Title: Separate "suitable as a guard" from "suitable as a new guard"
Version: $Revision: 15606 $
Last-Modified: $Date: 2008-07-02 14:04:01 -0400 (Wed, 02 Jul 2008) $
Author: Nick Mathewson
Created: 1-Jul-2008
Status: Draft

Overview

   Right now, Tor has one flag that clients use both to tell which
   nodes should be kept as guards, and which nodes should be picked
   when choosing new guards.  This proposal separates this flag into
   two.

Motivation

   Balancing clients amoung guards is not done well by our current
   algorithm.  When a new guard appears, it is chosen by clients
   looking for a new guard with the same probability as all existing
   guards... but new guards are likelier to be under capacity, whereas
   old guards are likelier to be under more use.

Implementation

   We add a new flag, NewGuard.  Clients will change so that when they
   are choosing new guards, they only consider nodes with the NewGuard
   flag set.

   For now, authorities will always set NewGuard if they are setting
   the Guard flag.  Later, it will be easy to migrate authorities to
   set NewGuard for underused guards.

Alternatives

   We might instead have authorities list weights with which nodes
   should be picked as guards.