[tor-relays] Improving Node Connection Testing

[Yawning Angel]

(Ugggggghhh, top posting. /rant)

> On 2.6.15 12:26, teor wrote:
> >> Date: Tue, 02 Jun 2015 11:58:25 -0400
> >> From: 12xBTM <12xbtm at gmail.com>
> >>
> > Since, as far as I know, Tor connections are in-order delivery,
> > dropping packets will cause retransmits, and back up (parts of) the
> > transmission. This will reduce the bandwidth as a side-effect. This
> > reduction in bandwidth is currently measured by the bwauths - but,
> > as you say, it isn't a direct measurement.

All connections are over TCP, so loss plays a huge factor in available
bandwidth.  Measured performance will be utterly abysmal if loss is
high, because congestion control uses loss as feedback and backs off
quite aggressively (NB: Certain exotic variants that shouldn't be used
with Tor are less aggressive here).

On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 12:45:59 -0400
12xBTM <12xbtm at gmail.com> wrote:
> I once ran a node on a college network for just a few weeks. Then I 
> found out at peak hours, packet loss was >90%. My measured bandwidth 
> never reflected that. Now, scale that up. An enemy makes a ton of
> nodes like that, and now has a large portion of circuit going through
> them. That will cripple the usability of those circuits and their
> users. Likewise with latency.

This is likely because your node's bandwidth never happened to get
measured when loss was that high.  The bwauths could attempt to perform
more frequent measurements here, but IIRC even with the recent much
needed improvements, it takes quite a while to fully measure the entire
network (and the new code is a dramatic improvement over the code used
when you were running your relay).

I don't see why measuring latency would be any better in this regard,
and of all the things to do wrt the bwauths, bolting more features on
is not something I would personally consider important right now.

Regards,

-- 
Yawning Angel
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