Proposal 167: Vote on network parameters in consensus

[Roger Dingledine]

On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 03:45:05PM -0400, Nick Mathewson wrote:
> >   V3 votes should include a new "params" line after the known-flags
> >   line. It contains key=value pairs, where value is an integer.
> 
> Let's say that all the keys need to match the Keyword pattern in
> dir-spec.txt.

Ok.

> >   Consensus documents that are generated with a sufficiently new consensus
> >   method (7?) then include a params line that includes every key listed
> >   in any vote,
> 
> We need to specify what order the parameters appear in the consensus,
> and what position in the consensus the parameters line appears.  Let's
> say that the keys are sorted lexically in the output,

Ok.

> and that the
> line appears directly after "known-flags".

Yep, that agrees with my original choice (above).

> > and the median value for that key (in case of ties,
> >   we use the median closer to zero).
> 
> Is +1 or -1 closer to zero? ;)
> 
> For the sake of our sanity, why not have it be "the lower median"?
> That's easiest to implement.

Ok.

> Note that the design here allows any authority to introduce an
> arbitrary number of parameters.

We could do what we did with "Measured=" on the w line, which is "it
doesn't count unless at least three authorities vote about it".

--Roger