[tor-dev] Is PublishServerDescriptor needed to collect metrics?

[Karsten Loesing]

On 16/10/14 09:06, isis wrote:
> Roger Dingledine transcribed 1.0K bytes:
>> On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 09:44:24PM -0700, David Fifield wrote:
>>> Is there a way to send
>>> metrics data without also ending up in BridgeDB?
>>
>> Alas, not currently. That's because the metrics data is a side effect
>> of the bridge authority / bridgedb data flow.
>>
>> Your best bet at a short-term hack might be to add a line to the
>> descriptor which politely asks bridgedb not to give its address out.
> 
> Interesting idea...
> 
> Would this help Metrics produce more accurate data for the bridges which are
> built into Tor Browsers (but absent from BridgeDB)?

Yes, it would.

The alternative would be to remove all bridges from the bundles which
don't publish their descriptors to Tonga/BridgeDB.  The address is
already in the public bundle, so what's the purpose of hiding it from
BridgeDB...  I talked to bridge operators a couple times but did not
succeed and then gave up.

> Is there another use case?

Private bridges which are set up by people to help their friends and
family would also be included in the statistics.

Maybe there are more use cases.

> Also, with that setting, we could consider doing something like #4026, [0]
> except have the info specified in the descriptor. Something like:
> 
>   BridgeDistribution [email]|[https]|[none]|[any]
> 
> [0]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4026

Good idea.  I'm inclined to put that field into Onionoo for Atlas and
Globe to display it.  Then you and Matt can stop providing bridge pool
assignment files and I can stop processing them in metrics-db/Onionoo.
One thing less to maintain.  We can always resume sanitizing BridgeDB
data when you and Matt came up with some good statistics.

All the best,
Karsten