[tor-onions] Renaming Rendezvous Single Onion Services

[Alec Muffett]

On 23 February 2016 at 15:07, micah <micah at riseup.net> wrote:

>
> Ah, the hardest problem in computer science, naming!
>


Totally!  :-)


Alec Muffett <alec.muffett at gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Single* Hop Onion Services (*singleness not guaranteed)
>
> > On 23 Feb 2016 3:14 a.m., "Paul Syverson" <paul.syverson at nrl.navy.mil>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> If you want to underscore in the name specifically the not-hidden
> >> property, then I suggest the best would be 'Rendezvous Located-Onion
> >> Service'. And Single Onion Service, would be 'Located-Onion Service'.
>
> The problem with both 'Single Hop' and 'Rendezvous Located' is that it
> requires that you know enough about tor to understand what those
> mean, before you can understand that you don't get a certain property
> that you might be expecting. These describe the technology, instead of
> telling you what you get.
>


Oh yes, this is true; I suppose that underscoring my proposal is an
assumption that "Hidden Services" are no longer a positive (or complete)
description of the features that Tor provides, and that HS would be
deprecated as a term in favour of a broader "Onion Services" feature under
the greater Tor "brand".  Then when people are on stage talking about the
features provided by "Tor Onion Services" they can talk about capabilities:

- the first (and oldest) kind of onion services gives you anonymity &
privacy and end-to-end trust! (Full / 3-hop)

- a second, backward-compatible kind of onion service lets you trade
server-anonymity for better speed, lower latency & improved UI
responsiveness (1-hop)

- the third kind is for performance nerds, enabling optimum speed and
fastest connection setup for people who need to reach your site over Tor
primarily for end-to-end trust (Direct)

...rather than explaining a series of abstract names.

By having this kind of discussion in the public arena, narrative can be
moved away from spooky dark-web historical rubbish, towards instead the
beneficial - maybe "next step beyond SSL?" - features which Onions provide
to people who have need for better communications security.


At the same time, there is this effort to create RSOS and Single Onion
> Services. Does it make sense to continue to push for a broadening of the
> term Hidden->Onion Services, while also trying to individually name
> these different types of services?


I think not.  I feel we may perhaps be on the same page.  :-)

    -a


-- 
http://dropsafe.crypticide.com/aboutalecm
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