Nodes naming

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sun, May 06, 2007 at 10:38:58AM -0700, Mr. Blue wrote:
> What are the rules for tor node names.
> Which chars are allowed and what is a MAX number of
> symbols it can contain?

Section 2.2 of https://tor.eff.org/svn/trunk/doc/spec/dir-spec-v2.txt says:

 nickname ::= between 1 and 19 alphanumeric characters, case-insensitive.

> Are they unique?

No. But in some cases there can be only one node with a given nickname,
if that nickname is bound to a particular identity key by a naming
directory authority, and if the "named" one is running right now. You
can read a bit more about the Named flag in section 3.1, but its behavior
will likely change yet again in the future; see e.g. proposal 113:
https://tor.eff.org/svn/trunk/doc/spec/proposals/113-fast-authority-interface.txt
http://archives.seul.org/or/dev/Apr-2007/msg00040.html

If you want something unique, use the identity fingerprint (aka digest).

--Roger