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

[Karsten Loesing]

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

On 12/03/15 19:01, George Kadianakis wrote:
> Karsten Loesing <karsten at torproject.org> writes:
>> 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.

We briefly talked about this on IRC.  There are already quite similar
graphs that you want in b):

https://metrics.torproject.org/advbwdist-perc.html

https://metrics.torproject.org/advbwdist-relay.html

The graph you describe in a) is more difficult.  I haven't made up my
mind entirely here, but I think this graph doesn't fit on Metrics, but
rather a site or service dedicated to monitoring the network for
attacks or bugs.  Philipp's Sybil attack detector comes to mind.

But more generally, when we think about adding graphs to Metrics and
automating them, we should start with manually-created graphs first.
If we like them enough that we want to automate them, putting them on
Metrics is an option.

All the best,
Karsten

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

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVAwYJAAoJEJD5dJfVqbCrojgH/R0/2M19qn8s7xP/hCgWDm/S
+TFrVbKDUQNuCL6lwjEI0OEw/gAGxysxnm5fULFLgKnn0WvFPyc66a/D1bkS6HQ5
9orAzgLp5bNzQRYRuden/nG1OHrW+M+cZRTz1kjxG9/1Yd27ERbsIJgVezak0mYx
7+0uIddTs/AXTq9QHRwlnQZdCYcye/kOkJLuMA/EfLKy1ZjSlCgR7Xhf+p+4e15i
FxnhGrFdINIoTdcbvakXQ16Hi3ZuhCp5jYzV2RxRYa1CVogUe3SALhXyQaueZh4n
hPD6A8v78iHQB7r12zVDSOcLKllkFABlIphUfLJBWd5MTe0tkL8GDYsRdjnt/9o=
=mV9S
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----