[tor-dev] Bi-directional families in Onionoo and consensus weight as measure of relayed bandwidth

[Karsten Loesing]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Moving this discussion here from another list with Virgil's permission.

On 02/07/15 08:42, Virgil Griffith wrote:
> Big issues right now are: * Bugs (?) in Onionoo --- Onionoo doesn't
> sanitize its data.  For example, there's a lack of bidirectionality
> between relays of many families. 
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwjagz1RgJOnSkx0YTlhMHdfMFU/view?usp=sharing
>
>  There are currently about 665 pairs of family relays without
> bidirectionality. This is caused by the .torrc of some relays not
> pointing to its family members.
> 
> I am considering doing a service on top of Onionoo that sanitizes
> the raw Tor consensus to ensure things like bidirectional families.
> It's unclear how much other data needs sanitization.

I'd rather want to fix/change Onionoo than have you write another
service that processes Tor descriptors.  There's even a ticket for
this, we're just somewhat stuck by arguing about the best fix.  Maybe
I should just fix it somehow and, if necessary, fix it more later.

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/16276

Would that solve your problem?

What other problems would there be with Onionoo's data?  Can you make
a wish list?

> * A semi-reliable measure for the magnitude of traffic a relay has 
> routed.  We have confirmed instances of relays forging their 
> observed bandwidth, ergo we can't use that.  And thus far
> Consensus Weight is the best we've found, but it's unclear whether
> we can use that as a proxy of magnitude of relayed traffic. ---
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v1rutylD6RkBei9rEmSvsgmvQXhrIHXOr85NL3I9_q8/edit?usp=sharing
>
>  Right now the lack of a reliable measure of how much bandwidth is 
> relayed is the largest sticking point.

Actually, consensus weight (fraction) is a fine measure, and I like
how you're calling it "bandwidth points" in your prototype which
doesn't imply a bits per second or related unit.  I'd say assign
10,000 bandwidth points to all relays per day, depending on what
fraction of total consensus weight a relay had.  To me, it's fine that
this doesn't translate to bits or bytes.

How does that sound?

All the best,
Karsten

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVlPKJAAoJEJD5dJfVqbCrZWQH/0lHSdgy4PF7nQ8RMZryKpnf
o3Fvw8VkcIwZgJgp0MOLIVu0fZhcD8hhvSWd9yYTSpQwGwBayUJuPE0ao4MbfZYf
mwz5hkngzq1Z7654K65m/fYLu7EIbXI86vT4/Cwwh8cnGl/ezaliFVvVMOmKTyOb
UtV7T+Lgk5IgsGJOxQbpNHCTxyAokbAygqZ9Eq/6ZWqjZFBZb1P2XjV+IaziGyJl
yuxrD66cJe4ZmcpPe9g7mTa9JyQ5kmUOWogXhKTFWDFCcPslc0M49iiYohDmiNxC
5RGKp1dMuYkL6th9b3Uuc3W4TdCMaDHV96BDUD3qdlqCWBU0fD617f31+Hsb6Bg=
=0KdX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----