[tor-dev] Progress on hidserv-stats Metrics integration, request for code review

[George Kadianakis]

Karsten Loesing <karsten at torproject.org> writes:

> [Cc'ing tor-dev@, because why not.]
>
> On 11/03/15 19:13, Karsten Loesing wrote:
>> Please let me know if I can help *reduce* confusion somehow. :)
>
> Looking forward, hidden-service statistics are now available on Metrics:
>
> https://metrics.torproject.org/hidserv-data.html
>

Very nice!

> I also started making some very quick graphs here:
>
> https://people.torproject.org/~karsten/volatile/hidserv-stats-2015-03-11.pdf
>
> The question is, what graphs do we want on Metrics?  How about:
>
>  - Total hidden-service traffic in Mbit/s (per day, using weighted
> interquartile mean, like lower graph on page 1 of the PDF)
>
>  - Unique .onion addresses (per day, using weighted interquartile
> mean, like upper graph on page 1 of the PDF)
>
>  - Fraction of relays reporting hidden-service statistics (containing
> both dir-onions-seen and rend-relayed-cells, like page 3 of the PDF)
>

I think these are indeed the essential graphs here. Let's proceed with
these for now!

> Note that I left out "fraction of traffic", because we can't guarantee
> that our many assumptions we made for the blog post will hold in the
> future.  Happy to be convinced otherwise.
>
> Also note that more is not necessarily better.  All graphs we put on
> Metrics should be easy to comprehend for non-researchers and
> non-developers.  If there's a graph that you care about but that not
> many other people would care about, it's easier to write a graphing
> script to plot what's in hidserv.csv rather than add yet one more
> thing to Metrics.


I see what you are saying here.

At the same time, there are some technical graphs that I'd like to
monitor over time and I bet other researchers would also
enjoy. Unfortunately, those graphs are not particularly interesting to
common people or press. Still, having them on a website and getting
them updated on a daily basis would really help to monitor them in the
long-term.

This might be a bit off-topic but here are some examples of such
graphs:

a) Boxplot graphs with probabilities for guards/IPs/HSDirs etc.  I'd
   like this to monitor the outliers over time. I think these graphs
   would reveal some interesting big probabilities and maybe reveal
   attacks or find bugs. I think an old version of the extrapolation
   tech report used to have boxplots like this for RPs and HSDirs.  

b) Related to the above, I'd like to see boxplot graphs with reported
   bandwidth by relays. I have heard that adversarial relays sending
   fake high reported bandwidth is still a good way to get good
   probabilities during path selection.

I think a new tab on metrics called "Advanced" with such research
graphs would be helpful. Maybe.

> By the way, I decided against using onion service terminology, because
> I wasn't sure when we were planning to switch.  I'm not sure if
> Metrics should be one of the first Tor websites to switch, or whether
> people will just wonder what crazy Tor-unrelated stuff Metrics has
> statistics for.  I don't feel strongly though.  Thoughts?
>
> Thanks!
>
> All the best,
> Karsten