control time spent with a circuit

[Scott Bennett]

     On Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:55:54 +1000 Richard Baron Penman
<richardbp at gmail.com> wrote:
>I am after advice how to control/influence the time spent using a circuit.
>
>A few ideas from browsing the manual:
>- add port 80 to LongLivedPorts

     No.  Listing a port number in LongLivedPorts simply means that circuits
used to connect to a destination on port 80 must use only nodes given the
"Stable" flag by the authorities.

>- decrease CircuitBuildTimeout so have more robust longer lived circuits (or
>shorter?)

     No and...

>- set high CircuitStreamTimeout to change circuits less often (unfortunately
>not supported in my v0.2.1.26)

...no.  Please reread the man page for tor, which makes the functions of the
two options above quite clear.  The former determines how long tor will allow
construction of a circuit to go on before tor abandons it for taking too long
and begins constructing a different circuit instead.  The latter determines
how long tor will wait for a stream to connect to its destination via the
circuit to which the stream has been attached before abandoning the attempt
and reassigning the stream to a different circuit to try again.

>- increase NewCircuitPeriod so consider new circuits less often

     Even by your own line above, it is obvious that that parameter has no
bearing upon what you wrote that you are searching for.
>
>Is my understanding correct? And are there better approaches?
>
     No.  You need to read the man page again and with greater care.  There
is, AFAIK, only one parameter that does what you asked for, and that one is
MaxCircuitDirtiness.  That is also clear from the man page.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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