[tor-dev] New Proposal - UDP Application Support in Tor

[Micah Elizabeth Scott]

Hello tor-dev folks!

Late last year I started taking a close look at what it would take to 
support applications on Tor which rely on UDP networking. This was 
originally to be based on Nick's proposal, 339-udp-over-tor.

The scope of this work so far has been specifically focused on end-user 
application compatibility, and excludes fundamental changes to Tor's 
network structure or protocols for now.

This combination of approach and scope left me with more questions than 
answers, so I started looking deeper into the available solutions along 
with their expected benefits and risks. This proposal is the result of 
that investigation.

Please find the text attached, or in the torspec repo as proposal #348:

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/proposals/348-udp-app-support.md?ref_type=heads

Unlike a typical proposal, this does not recommend any specific change 
to the Tor implementation. Several possible changes are presented, but 
ultimately the recommended approach is to use application-specific UDP 
relays to achieve compatibility.

Integrated approaches are also presented, where Tor does involve itself 
in the transit of individual datagrams. These approaches offer 
advantages only when they are also part of a long-term plan to offer 
transport features beyond those offered by TCP. Until such a plan is 
in-scope, specific UDP extensions cannot be offered with confidence.

I would appreciate any feedback on this proposal, whether it's about 
this particular shorter-term context or about longer-term plans to 
achieve some kind of optional unreliable transport.

Thanks for your time!

--beth
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