[tor-talk] Putting the "Tor" back in Torrent

[Aymeric Vitte]

Hi,

I had a kind of same thoughts for the Peersm project at the begining, 
but it can not fly.

The Tor network is far too small for P2P applications and you (we) are 
not addressing the same threat at all, so even if you expand it I don't 
see the rationale of doing such.

Therefore, the idea is more to build something based on the Tor protocol 
rather than using absolutely the Tor network, ie building another 
network based on the Tor protocol concepts, personnaly I would not 
envision one second to use something like hidden services.

Of course, the fact that the Tor network is there can help, in the 
context of Peersm project it's only supposed to be used for web 
fetching, which is supposed to be marginal.

Please take a look at https://github.com/Ayms/torrent-live , 
popcorn-like side effect of Peersm project, working incredibely well, 
not related directly to this discussion for now but maybe later...

Regards

Aymeric

Le 11/07/2014 23:12, Helder Ribeiro a écrit :
> How a Popcorn Time fork could incentivize people to run thousands of
> new Tor relays
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022341
>
> Thinking about NAT traversal as Tor's killer feature lead to this
> discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018213
>
> **If torrents are P2P's killer application, and NAT traversal/"static
> IP" are Tor's (via hidden services), putting them together could prove
> to be the best incentivization scheme for growing the Tor network
> other than cold crypto cash[1].**
>
> ## You're stupid
>
> Everybody knows you're not supposed to use torrents with tor[2], right?
>
> But the problem there is using _existing_ bittorent clients and how
> they leak IPs to trackers, etc. Drop those stones for a second and
> hear me out. We're not proxying traffic from regular bittorrent
> clients through tor, we're making something new.
>
> ## Onion Popcorn
>
> Say we do the following:
>
> 1. Make a DHT that serves out peer onion addresses (OAs?) instead of
> IP addresses;
> 2. Fork Popcorn Time, make it create a hidden service for the user and
> connect to the OA DHT to fetch peers;
> 3. Connect to peers via their hidden services.
>
> ## Stop righ there, you'll break the network!
>
> Oh, I forgot:
> 4. Make the Popcorn Time fork also **be a relay by default* whenever possible**.
>
> Nobody would agree to do this on the main tor software for a thousand
> reasons, but it's an *app* and you can decide to do that in it
> independently. If you're going to add a lot of load to the network,
> you have to give back.
>
> This "Onion Popcorn" could also **soft-enforce download limits** based
> on the amount of traffic the user has relayed. **Sane defaults and
> interface nudges can go a long way.** (Popcorn Time itself doesn't
> even expose network/bandwidth adjustments to the user and, for the
> mainstream, we can count on hiding some options as something easier to
> do than coming up with a proof-of-correctness anti-leeching scheme.)
>
> Bandwidth at first probably wouldn't be enough to _stream_ anything,
> but otherwise should work for downloading and watching.
>
> **The end result is that you're incentivizing Tor "miners" by giving
> them something they want (so bad, in fact, that it takes up most of
> the Internet's traffic) in exchange for relaying traffic for the rest
> of the Tor network.**
>
> To boot, you end up with a very, very private torrent network that
> never touches any exit node.
>
> ## You'll _still_ break the network!
>
> Even if these torrent nodes are a net positive in terms of relay
> capacity, this much usage of hidden services would probably put an
> unanticipated load on hidden service directories and introduction
> points. That could turn out to be a problem.
>
> With enough demand, though, I think capacity finds a way of taking
> care of itself. Isn't "the whole Internet is all of a sudden trying to
> get private!" the thing we want the most? Much better problem trying
> to scale a network that a lot of people want to use, than trying to
> convince people to use something they don't see a need for.
>
> If it's something people want, they'll find out about "how to make X
> faster" and learn that it's based on Tor and that you should become a
> relay or donate money here so that your connection gets faster.
>
> Oh, and for every 100 new relays, you gain on average X extra kbytes
> of download speed: help us get to this month's goal of another 100 by
> donating 5 bucks a month!
>
> ## What do you say?
>
> Alright, now back to me being stupid: please tear this idea down :) Thanks!
>
> Cheers,
> Helder
>
> *: There are issues with running a relay and a hiddens service on the
> same machine. Discussion here:
> https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2014-July/033819.html
>
> P.S.: you can follow me @obvio171 on Twitter.
>
> P.S.2: comments on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8022341.
>
> [1]: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/torcoin-making-anonymity-pay/2014/06/06
> [2]: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea
>

-- 
Peersm : http://www.peersm.com
node-Tor : https://www.github.com/Ayms/node-Tor
GitHub : https://www.github.com/Ayms