[tor-talk] What about Kademlia?

[TheMindwareGroup]

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Question 1) Does the Tor client remember the state of the relay list
between boots?

Assuming there isn't too much time between boots a lot of the nodes
will likely still be there the next time you log on, making it quicker
next time and easier to boot, possibly even to the point of not
needing the root servers to boot onto the network.

I assume Tor downloads the entire list of *all* available public
relays from root directory servers and mirroring clients (like the
bridges you connect to), which of course if they get blocked off from
all sources the whole system goes down (for you). Admittedly it would
be difficult for them to block all the mirroring bridges anyway so
this might not be of great concern at the moment, but I could well see
them improving the traffic detection and blocking at border firewalls
which would stop people from booting.

But lets assume at some point in the future they perform the next wave
of blocking that pretty well cuts a lot of people from accessing the
nework, noone will be able to download updates and they wont be able
to boot.

Question 2) Has the Tor team considered using the Kademlia algorithm
for inter peer communication and decentralized resistance?

This way even if the main servers are blocked the network still works.

One advantage is this way even if your blocked off from the main
network your client will still function by connecting to the peers in
your area, actually it occurs to me this might not be that useful to
the user since if your data cannot leave your country it probably cant
get to the *clear* internet anyway. It also occurs to me that sometime
in the future (probably not that far into the future either) there
wont be much of a thing as a *clear* internet.

Possible disadvantage is your peer might perform a lot of inter peer
communication allowing them to find more relay addresses.

But I notice that the client has to connect to a number of IPs anyway
to boot up and setup tunnels, and these connections obviously cannot
be avoided, so Kademlia might be an advantage in this case.

I was thinking about the problem that required bridges to get onto the
network, but what if every peer could be given a *small world* view of
the network, they can see some peers but not all as if they are short
sighted,, bridges exiting the country could be hidden behind other
peers so you cannot see them, this prevents them from getting all the
IPs. It would also remove the need to have central servers almost
entirely, as the peer list will be distributed by the peers
automatically, just one peer is all that is needed to get onto the
network. The DHT could also be used to store and retrieve information
like for example storage of the DNS information to locate resources
within the network. You can still have a bunch of the relays invisible
whos IPs are not propagated.

Im not sure about how this would affect there ability to detect the
network, but it would surely make the network highly resistant.

But then again resistance doesnt matter if jack boots come knocking
your door down.

This feature could be turned on and off and maybe only used as a last
resort if all other routes of connection fail.

Not sure if this is a good idea but it would certainly add resistance
and scalablity.

~TheMindwareGroup
TheMindwareGroup at gmail.com PGP: 0xf4b6586f
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