[tor-talk] How to make 100.000 bridge?

[Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)]

Hi all,

i've been thinking about the bridge issues.

Specifically about the fact that the entrance barrier to install a
bridge it's quite high.

You need:
- someone with technical skills to install a bridge
- an internet exposed server where you can install your own software
that run in background

Those kind of requirements provide a very high entrance barrier for
anyone that would like to "support freedom of speech".

I've been thinking about a different model that would strongly reduce
the entrance barrier to install and setup a "bridge".

Introduce a concept of "Stateless bridge" that basically just act as a
TCP forwarder between a Tor client and a Tor Relay, making it easier for
anyone that's able to manage a web hosting panel to participate and
provide the availability of their system.

To do so we make think about a stateless bridge that use HTTP/HTTPS as a
transport and that's provide as a single .php/.jsp/.py/.ruby application.

That way anyone would be able to just drop a single file into it's own
web space and this "Stateless bridge" would be represented by a URL .

So a "Stateless bridge" like this would not require to insert a bridge like:
1.1.1.1:39393

But as http(s)://www.mywordpressblog.com/blahblah.php .

I expect that a "communication campaign" to get people install such kind
of bridge would really provide *much more* installation.

Anyone with a basic web-related skills (even just managing a cpanel of a
webhosting company), would just need to "upload" it.

Such kind of "Stateless bridge" could be provided as a Wordpress
Application, so that all Wordpress users would be able in a couple of
click to install it.

The amount of such kind of bridge that would get installed by the crowd
would probably be extremely higher.

Obviously this would need the support, into the Tor Client, of an
HTTP(S) based transport.

This method does not want to solve any issue related to Bridge
distribution, but to think about a way to extremely-simplify and
increase the ability to provide participatory support to Tor network.

-naif