accounting vs long lived nodes

[David Vennik]

Michael Tharp wrote:
...
>> If a node has bandwidth accounting, it should not be listed as long
>> lived, because obviously it is likely to go down at any moment. I don't
>> know if it will make that much difference to persistent session use on
>> tor or not, but I think that it is only logical that bandwidth
>> accounting should flag a 'not long lived' flag on the server information
>> so that circuits to irc and ssh and other long lived connections don't
>> use it. i know this might 'reduce anonymity' through the weakening of
>> defenses against traffic analysis, but endless reconnections to irc
>> servers, in my experience, is annoying both to myself and to the endless
>> timeouts in the ORC which is exclusively tor-accessible.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> David Vennik
>>   
> 
> Doesn't tor already have this? Connections to certain ports (21, 22, 80
> among others) that are typically reserved for long-lived connections
> will avoid nodes that have been up for less than a certain amount of time.
> 

you are missing my point. if a node has bandwidth accounting configured
it may stay up for a week but it could hibernate in five seconds. this
is not helpful for users of persistent connection based services. some
kind of flag on the server description suggesting that the server is
liable to go offline at any time would be very useful for preventing the
endless string of timeouts that using tor for these kinds of connections
causes.
-- 
http://davidvennik.blogspot.com/
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