[tor-relays] why the network lost >350 relays and some bridges

[s7r]

nusenu wrote:
> As some of you might have noticed the tor network recently
> lost a noticeable number of relays and bridges as seen in the
> metrics.tpo relay graphs (0.7% cw fraction).
> 
> https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html
> https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DwGAESoXgAEoB6L.jpg
> 
> this occurred when these relays upgraded from tor 0.3.3.10 to 0.3.4.9
> (package maintainer update)
> 
> All these relays were behind NAT devices and they relied on a tor
> feature that got removed between these two versions:
> 
>>   o Removed features:
>>     - The PortForwarding and PortForwardingHelper features have been
>>       removed. [...]https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25409
> 
> The portforwarding worked only in about 5% of cases so only 350 of the over 6000
> relays actually became reachable.
> 
> Since I still believe these relays are not run by humans I hope they remain
> unreachable behind their NAT routers.
> 

Agreed, a very good and indicated removal -- those features where quite
fragile and looked to users like they working as they should, where
actually they worked in a very little percent.

Any relay properly run by a human, even behind NAT, can still be easily
configured with the proper port forwarding. For some time now Tor is
very explicit in such situations, it checks the discovered address vs
the address in torrc/descriptor and indicates if there is a mismatch, so
the user knows exactly what and where to fix.

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