[tor-relays] [Looking for feedback] An easier way to declare families

[Nick Mathewson]

On Sat, Nov 6, 2021 at 10:36 AM Nick Mathewson <nickm at torproject.org> wrote:

> Hello, relay operators!
>
> I'm hoping to get some feedback from relay operators, particularly
> those who use the MyFamily option, about the best way to deploy
> proposal 321.  You can read the proposal at:
>
>
> https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/master/proposals/321-happy-families.md
>
> The main idea of this proposal is to provide an easier way for
> relays to declare that they are in the same family.  With proposal
> 321, each relay in the same family uses a cryptographic certificate
> to prove that it is in the same family as the others.
>
> (That's just a summary; see the full proposal at the link above for
> a write up of how it works, an a description of backwards
> compatibility issues.)
>
> Now, my question is, how can we make this approach as usable as possible?
> There are several different ways that we could have it work in practice:
>

A relay operator has asked me, offline, if it is possible under this
proposal for a relay to belong to more than one family.  (For example, if
there were two relay operators who each operated some relays on their own,
but also operated some relays jointly, it might make sense to put the
jointly operated relays into _both_ of the operators' families .)

This is something that the proposal currently supports, but there are a
couple of limitations I was wondering about:

 1) The proposal currently limits each relay to no more than 3 families.
Is that a reasonable upper bound?
 2) We hadn't been planning to implement multi-family support right away,
though I could if needed.  Is that something that many operators would want?

best wishes,
-- 
Nick
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