Bigger Thinking [was: Tor Project 2008 Tax Return]

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 10:53:48PM -0600, Jim wrote:
> I connect to the Internet with dialup.  I have been successfully using  
> Tor clients for 4+ years.  One of the issues with using Tor over a slow  
> connection is the amount of time it takes to update the information  
> about the network when Tor is first started after having been off-line  
> for a while.  Depending on connection speed and how long the client has  
> been off-line, this typically takes about 3 to 10 minutes.  Perhaps a  
> bit longer.  My experience is that during this time the connection is  
> pretty much useless for any other purpose.

Yep.

> While inconvenient, this situation is certainly manageable.  My concern  
> has been what happens as the Tor network grows.  At some point the delay  
> would start being a serious problem.

Here's some reading:

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/overhead-directory-info%3A-past%2C-present%2C-future

We haven't gotten the "microdescriptor" out in practice yet, but
it's on its way:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1748

>  Perhaps with a much larger Tor  
> network, each client doesn't actually have to know about all of the  
> nodes but can make do with a reasonably sized "sampling."

Most ways to do this are bad news:
http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#danezis-pet2008

But it probably is how the distant future will look:
http://www.hatswitch.org/~nikita/papers/shadowwalker-ccs09.pdf
http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#ccs09-torsk
http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#wpes09-dht-attack

--Roger

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