[tor-dev] Filtering of DA and bootstrap

[Nick Mathewson]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 3:15 AM, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)
<lists at infosecurity.ch> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> in a network where the Directory Authority hard-coded in Tor code are
> filtered a Tor client cannot bootstrap.
>
> But as far as i understood there are (hundreds?) of Tor DA Mirror.
>
> If so, packaging the Tor clients periodically, bundling the latest
> consensus with the software, would provide higher chance for a client to
> bootstrap, finding an unfiltered Tor DA Mirror.

Yup.  (In our design documents and specifications, they're called
"directory caches.")

Please see proposal 146 for an initial design here back from 2008, and
the discussions on #572 for a list of obstacles we ran into the last
time we tried to implement it.  Still seems worth doing to me, but
there are some remaining issues to solve there. Designs welcome. Code
also welcome.

yrs,
-- 
Nick