[tor-project] Diversifying Bandwidth Measurement

[teor]

> On 27 Feb 2017, at 13:16, Rabbi Rob Thomas <robt at cymru.com> wrote:
> 
> First, my apologies!  We've had some issues with Cogent as a peer of
> late, though I didn't realize it was impacting our Tor efforts.  Ugh.
> 
> Second, I'm going to turn this over to the Engineering team here.  We
> will shift things about for the bwauth.torproject.org server to
> provide better connectivity.  That may take a bit, but it will be a
> priority.

Thank you, Rob, I really appreciate this.

> Third, we can easily stand up something on 38.229.70.2.  Was this one
> of your servers, or one of ours?  Do you recall?

I'm not sure: it was set up back in 2011, before my time.
Here's the original ticket:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/2014

We should check how many bandwidth authority operators are configured
to use this IP address before we do anything with it.

For reference, here are the setup instructions for the HTTPS server.[0]

> On 27 Feb 2017, at 13:23, Sebastian Hahn <tor at sebastianhahn.net> wrote:
> 
> I am and always have been operating my own https server for the bw files
> that sits directly next to the dirauth/bwauth server. I totally hoped
> everoyne else was doing the same thing or at least not share the same
> server for more than one bwauth instance. Is that incorrect?

I don't know: but it seems that the issue with Cogent affects a
majority of the bandwidth authorities. Perhaps it's more than just
cymru that's affected?

If you send me the address of your HTTPS server, I can ask a relay
operator to do a traceroute and speed test. Or you can do one to
51.15.50.10 (which used to get multiple megabytes a second, but has
dropped to 500 KB/s).

> As for the social aspect, life's tough is the best answer I have. The
> implemented algorithm uses median, so if we fix this we probably
> produce a bunch of unhappy US relay operators. Transatlantic bw sucks,
> and if your hosting provider doesn't pay $$$ to have a decent connection
> across the pond, you'll make people who use your relay sad also. I would
> be quite willing to guess that the cheap hosters have good links to the
> closest speed measurement website and nothing else…

Trans-pacific is worse. (Except in this case.)

My typical answer is: "we prioritise clients".

> PS: What is the status on bwauth? Can I finally upgrade my bwauth? It
> broke again twice recently, and it's keeping my dirauth on an older
> OS version that I must migrate away from soon.


I am not aware of anything that's ready right now.
I would hope we could test it on the test network before deployment.

[0]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/torflow.git/blob_plain/master:/NetworkScanners/BwAuthority/README.BwAuthorities

T

--
Tim Wilson-Brown (teor)

teor2345 at gmail dot com
PGP C855 6CED 5D90 A0C5 29F6 4D43 450C BA7F 968F 094B
ricochet:ekmygaiu4rzgsk6n
xmpp: teor at torproject dot org
------------------------------------------------------------------------



-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 801 bytes
Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/attachments/20170227/2457076e/attachment.sig>