[tor-relays] Hidden Service web design to speed load times

[Gordon Morehouse]

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Hey folks,

I've been off the list for quite a long time due to personal reasons,
and I'm aware I have a couple irons still in the fire WRT RasPi and
the SYN flood stuff - I'll get to it.

Today, though, I came across this article:

http://csswizardry.com/2013/01/front-end-performance-for-web-designers-and-front-end-developers/#section:dns-prefetching

tl;dr you can add a 'dns-prefetch' link tag in the HEAD of HTML
documents to do DNS lookups ASAP, instead of later on when the browser
parses the content which does it, or your Javascript (yeah, I know)
does it, etc.

I'm wondering if this would have any value for Tor hidden services -
would a "DNS lookup" of a .onion force Tor to start building a circuit
to the hidden service in question?

I suppose one could deliberately request a nonexistent file or a 1x1
pixel PNG or something, too, to get the circuit built, but this is
obviously a little cleaner and probably a little better for privacy
versus an HTTP request which may be logged even if the user never
takes an action to *actually* request real info.

Just a thought for hidden service operations.  It's always easier to
get one's message out the less time it takes to load.

Best,
- -Gordon M.
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