[tor-dev] Proposal 335: An authority-only design for MiddleOnly

[Nick Mathewson]

On Sun, Oct 10, 2021 at 12:39 PM nusenu <nusenu-lists at riseup.net> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> has this proposal any implications wrt to making the MiddleOnly
> feature available to clients (without requiring DA actions)?
>
> With ExcludeExitNodes/ExitNodes + ExcludeGuardNodes [1]
> tor clients basically can get the "MiddleOnly" feature without DA actions,
> but ExcludeGuardNodes [1] is not there yet. This is why I'm asking.
>
> [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/merge_requests/436

I don't think it would especially help or prevent a
MiddleOnly/ExcludeGuard feature for clients.

> > ## Generating votes
> >
> > When voting for a relay with the `MiddleOnly` flag, an authority
> > should set all flags indicating that a relay is unusable for a
> > particular purpose, and against all flags indicating that the relay
> > is usable for a particular position.
>
> This part was not clear to me, but if I ignore it, the rest makes sense.
> It is not clear because it says an authority should set _all_ flags to indicate
> that a relay is unusable for a particular purpose.

Ooops, that should say that the authority should vote for all "this
relay is unusable" flags, and against all "this relay is usable for a
non-middle purpose" flags.  I'll edit.