[tor-talk] Question Regarding Routing of Network-Traffic using Tor-Browser

[Harmony]

Felix:
> Hello,
> 
> I am from Germany and I use the Tor-Browser very often. I think Tor is a
> great product.
> 
> I have a question regarding the connection from my Tor-Browser to the
> Tor-Network.
> 
> I noticed, that Tor tends to always connect to the same Tor-Relays on
> the internet. I can observe this when I monitor the connections using
> Netstat on my Linux-machine - even after restart of the Tor-Browser or
> even after a reboot of the Linux-machine.
> 
> So my initial Idea was to delete the "cached*-files" in the
> /Data/Tor-Directory before each start - but this does not help - Tor
> always connects basically to the same Tor-Nodes all the time. I think
> this is probably due to an internal "ranking" in the Tor-Network.
> 
> So my question is, would´nt it be better (or more secure) for the
> End-User, if the Tor-Browser (or the Onion-Router) would change the used
> Tor-Relays i.e. every 5 minutes. As the Tor-Browser connects to more
> than one Tor-Relay, this could be staged, Drop Tor-Relay 1 after
> connection to Tor-Relay 3 has been established i.e.
> 
> Are there any plans to enhance the Tor-Network / the Tor-Browser in this
> direction?

Hello Felix,

https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#EntryGuards

This is in fact a safety mechanism that Tor uses, as explained in the
above link. If your browser connected to new 'first-hop' relays every
time, there would be a greater chance that one day all the relays in
your circuit are attacking you. By picking one (or a few) guards only
and cycling them rarely, it is that much more tedious for anyone who is
waiting until you pick their bad relay in order to attack you.

Tor certainly did at one stage change its circuits after ten minutes, as
you suggest, but for various reasons this was altered, and in any case
Tor Browser itself manages circuits in a different way to the core Tor
program. It's a much-discussed question and no one yet has the perfect
answer.

If for some reason you really do need to change the guards that your
browser is using, the file to delete is called 'state', and it is under
Browser/TorBrowser/Data/Tor (on Linux). Generally, however, you should
not do that.

[I am not an expert on any of the above.]

Thanks,

> Thank you very much.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Felix