13 ms·

I can't read this article because I'm at work, but unless they managed to solve the problem of Tor being very, very, very slow, this will never happen. End user

I can't read this article because I'm at work, but unless they managed to solve the problem of Tor being very, very, very slow, this will never happen. End users will definitely notice a difference and likely won't care about their privacy. They'll just see Firefox being way slower than Chrome and switch.

astrodust 8y ago
So long as Tor depends on volunteers to maintain exit nodes, and with that the risk of being arrested for all sorts of criminal activity by non-tech-savvy law enforcement, this is how it'll be.
- openasocket 8y ago
  Tor is slow because every packet has to be routed through several random servers distributed all over the world with multiple layers of crypto at every pass. Even with plenty of top-of-the-line inner and exit nodes you will still see substantially more latency than just sending packets directly.
  - astrodust 8y ago
    That wouldn't be as big an issue if all the nodes were very well connected, like positioned near big peering points, but they're not.
    - seandougall 8y ago
      The "distributed all over the world" part would still be just as much of an issue; the speed of light puts a substantial lower bound on the total latency.
      - astrodust 8y ago
        True, but pinging from one hub to another is way faster than someone's cable modem in Mumbai to someone's in Australia to someone's in Peru and back again. Those last miles add up in a huge way.
  - pathseeker 8y ago
    No, IPSec tunnels to remote headquarters have indistinguishable latency impacts for normal users browsing (<150ms). The bad latency is because of congestion, not crypto and multiple hops.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      Mirimir typically uses a three-VPN nested chain. Just now, rtt to google.com was ~260 msec. That's four hops. Just not with servers on the far side of the planet.
- Exuma 8y ago
  What do you mean by this: "with that the risk of being arrested for all sorts of criminal activity by non-tech-savvy law enforcement" You can be arrested for things just by using Tor if they mix you up with someone else or something?
  - ComodoHacker 8y ago
    Depending on jurisdiction — yes. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/access-now-and-eff-condemn-arrest-tor-node-operator-dmitry-bogatov-russia https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/access-now-and-eff-con...
  - nodja 8y ago
    If you use tor and only visit onion sites, the sites don't know who visited them. If you use tor and visit the regular web sites (like, say, HN), the last computer that does the actual request to the website is an exit node, as far as that site is concerned, the exit node made the http request. If you run an exit node, your computer is going to be doing tons of requests to all kinds of websites, this may include sites that deal in illegal stuff like drugs, child prostitution, human trafficking, terrorism, etc. edit: Forgot to say, you must explicit be running an exit node. Not every tor node is an exit node.
  - kbrackbill 8y ago
    You can be arrested for running an exit node, because other Tor users' traffic will appear to be coming from you. For example: https://www.deepdotweb.com/2017/05/01/russian-tor-exit-node-operator-arrested/ https://www.deepdotweb.com/2017/05/01/russian-tor-exit-node-... https://www.zdnet.com/article/dan-egerstads-tor-exit-nodes-get-him-arrested-and-proves-a-point-i-made-in-july/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/dan-egerstads-tor-exit-nodes-g... https://www.pcworld.com/article/2452320/tor-exit-node-operator-convicted-of-abetting-spread-of-child-porn.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2452320/tor-exit-node-operat...
    - jerheinze 8y ago
      All of them from people running their exit from home, which has always been warned against.
Lennie 8y ago
I think Tor will get faster, now new protocols like TLS/1.3, HTTP/2 and QUIC are being developed. Currently Tor looks like HTTPS done with TLS/1.2 on TCP (like regular HTTPS). As these newer protocols get more and more delpoyed Tor can start using them too which will help make Tor faster.
- dimator 8y ago
  Those standards have nothing to do with Tor's speed.
  - jerheinze 8y ago
    Well HTTP/2 is disabled in the Tor Browser (for now), and it has a positive impact on speed, so they do matter: https://bugs.torproject.org/14952 https://bugs.torproject.org/14952
  - Ajedi32 8y ago
    Tor circuits tend to be rather high latency, so anything that reduces the number of round trips needed for page loads is likely to have a significant impact on Tor's effective speed.
  - AlyssaRowan 8y ago
    Not immediately, but I feel that as those protocols become more ubiquitous, _maybe_ the base Tor transport protocol (for nodes which aren't bridges) might be able to benefit from some of the same upgrades by using them? I don't know how much (if at all) it might help—but other, similar overlay networks have previously noticed that (intuitively) inefficiency in the transport protocol is likely to be (broadly speaking) multiplied by the number of hops; so any improvements in that might be useful in improving the user experience by using the same available resources more efficiently. What that might mean for Tor's perceived speed is a somewhat murky issue, as that's a function of the complex interaction of latency and bandwidth and crypto and routing overhead of all the involved nodes in a tunnel put together; which of course is also shared with other tunnels; not to mention it will _also_ be particularly affected by exit node outproxy bandwidth; _and_ any possible packet loss and delay caused by both incidental _and_ deliberate adverse network conditions…
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Tor is not that slow these days. Sometimes you get a bad circuit but you can reroute and expect speeds comparable to mobile phone networks.
- aseipp 8y ago
  Is it even worth talking about speed without at least considering client network conditions? A lot of people have poor internet connections, many places world-over are basically mobile-internet only already, shared internet spaces with variable QoS (campuses), etc etc. Most people aren't using engineer-priced laptops/workstations or backed by enterprise-grade routing equipment, after all.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    If I understand Tor correctly, last mile connectivity is not a bottleneck.
    - ryanisnan 8y ago
      You are correct. Tor's speed has nothing to do with your local rig or network. Unless you're on an abacus.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- dbolgheroni 8y ago
  Yes it is. I can't speak for everyone, but in Brazil, it's virtually impossible to use Tor even for HTML-only websites. And I can say most people have a slower bandwidth than I.
mirimir 8y ago
This would be a privacy option for Firefox, not the default. But yes, Tor introduces latency and reduces bandwidth. For traffic to the open Internet, traffic uses circuits through three relays: entry guard, middle and exit. So there are four hops between users and websites, instead of one. The Earth's circumference is about 40 thousand km. So the longest path is arguably ~20 thousand km. And rtt for that would be about 300-500 msec, according to my measurements.[0] It's only ~130 msec at lightspeed, but there are some copper links, plus switching time and caching. So with four hops, rtt would at most be 1200-2000 msec, if every hop were the maximum length. In practice, rtt for Tor is at most half that, and often even less. But latency is actually good if your goal is anonymity. Because it reduces the accuracy of traffic analysis. With traditional onion sites, there are two three-relay circuits, one for the user and one for the site, plus a rendezvous relay. So rtt is much greater. However, sites can opt for one-relay circuits, sacrificing anonymity, so overall rtt isn't that bad. Bandwidth is also reduced with Tor. Increased latency is part of that. But also, many relays have low-bandwidth uplinks, especially ones that people run at home. The Tor client does pick faster relays, but there's a tradeoff, in that doing so reduces anonymity. Increased investment in high-bandwidth relays would help a lot. Also, with more relays, it would be workable to implement multipath circuits. Especially for onion sites, where precious exit relays aren't needed. Using MPTCP, I managed ~50 Mbps throughput for bbcp transfers between onion sites (with gigabit uplinks).[1] I was getting ~36 subflows per tcp connection. 0) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/how-to-verify-physical-locations-of-internet-servers https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/how-to-verify-physical-l... 1) https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUDV2KHrAgs84oUc7z9zQmZ3whx1NB6YDPv8ZRuf4dutN/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUDV2KHrAgs84oUc7z9zQmZ3whx1NB6YDPv8ZR...
- ngold 8y ago
  So basically satellite Internet speeds. That is pretty good.

astrodust 8y ago

So long as Tor depends on volunteers to maintain exit nodes, and with that the risk of being arrested for all sorts of criminal activity by non-tech-savvy law enforcement, this is how it'll be.

openasocket 8y ago
Tor is slow because every packet has to be routed through several random servers distributed all over the world with multiple layers of crypto at every pass. Even with plenty of top-of-the-line inner and exit nodes you will still see substantially more latency than just sending packets directly.
- astrodust 8y ago
  That wouldn't be as big an issue if all the nodes were very well connected, like positioned near big peering points, but they're not.
  - seandougall 8y ago
    The "distributed all over the world" part would still be just as much of an issue; the speed of light puts a substantial lower bound on the total latency.
    - astrodust 8y ago
      True, but pinging from one hub to another is way faster than someone's cable modem in Mumbai to someone's in Australia to someone's in Peru and back again. Those last miles add up in a huge way.
- pathseeker 8y ago
  No, IPSec tunnels to remote headquarters have indistinguishable latency impacts for normal users browsing (<150ms). The bad latency is because of congestion, not crypto and multiple hops.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Mirimir typically uses a three-VPN nested chain. Just now, rtt to google.com was ~260 msec. That's four hops. Just not with servers on the far side of the planet.
Exuma 8y ago
What do you mean by this: "with that the risk of being arrested for all sorts of criminal activity by non-tech-savvy law enforcement" You can be arrested for things just by using Tor if they mix you up with someone else or something?
- ComodoHacker 8y ago
  Depending on jurisdiction — yes. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/access-now-and-eff-condemn-arrest-tor-node-operator-dmitry-bogatov-russia https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/access-now-and-eff-con...
- nodja 8y ago
  If you use tor and only visit onion sites, the sites don't know who visited them. If you use tor and visit the regular web sites (like, say, HN), the last computer that does the actual request to the website is an exit node, as far as that site is concerned, the exit node made the http request. If you run an exit node, your computer is going to be doing tons of requests to all kinds of websites, this may include sites that deal in illegal stuff like drugs, child prostitution, human trafficking, terrorism, etc. edit: Forgot to say, you must explicit be running an exit node. Not every tor node is an exit node.
- kbrackbill 8y ago
  You can be arrested for running an exit node, because other Tor users' traffic will appear to be coming from you. For example: https://www.deepdotweb.com/2017/05/01/russian-tor-exit-node-operator-arrested/ https://www.deepdotweb.com/2017/05/01/russian-tor-exit-node-... https://www.zdnet.com/article/dan-egerstads-tor-exit-nodes-get-him-arrested-and-proves-a-point-i-made-in-july/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/dan-egerstads-tor-exit-nodes-g... https://www.pcworld.com/article/2452320/tor-exit-node-operator-convicted-of-abetting-spread-of-child-porn.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2452320/tor-exit-node-operat...
  - jerheinze 8y ago
    All of them from people running their exit from home, which has always been warned against.

Lennie 8y ago

I think Tor will get faster, now new protocols like TLS/1.3, HTTP/2 and QUIC are being developed. Currently Tor looks like HTTPS done with TLS/1.2 on TCP (like regular HTTPS). As these newer protocols get more and more delpoyed Tor can start using them too which will help make Tor faster.

dimator 8y ago
Those standards have nothing to do with Tor's speed.
- jerheinze 8y ago
  Well HTTP/2 is disabled in the Tor Browser (for now), and it has a positive impact on speed, so they do matter: https://bugs.torproject.org/14952 https://bugs.torproject.org/14952
- Ajedi32 8y ago
  Tor circuits tend to be rather high latency, so anything that reduces the number of round trips needed for page loads is likely to have a significant impact on Tor's effective speed.
- AlyssaRowan 8y ago
  Not immediately, but I feel that as those protocols become more ubiquitous, _maybe_ the base Tor transport protocol (for nodes which aren't bridges) might be able to benefit from some of the same upgrades by using them? I don't know how much (if at all) it might help—but other, similar overlay networks have previously noticed that (intuitively) inefficiency in the transport protocol is likely to be (broadly speaking) multiplied by the number of hops; so any improvements in that might be useful in improving the user experience by using the same available resources more efficiently. What that might mean for Tor's perceived speed is a somewhat murky issue, as that's a function of the complex interaction of latency and bandwidth and crypto and routing overhead of all the involved nodes in a tunnel put together; which of course is also shared with other tunnels; not to mention it will _also_ be particularly affected by exit node outproxy bandwidth; _and_ any possible packet loss and delay caused by both incidental _and_ deliberate adverse network conditions…

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Tor is not that slow these days. Sometimes you get a bad circuit but you can reroute and expect speeds comparable to mobile phone networks.

aseipp 8y ago
Is it even worth talking about speed without at least considering client network conditions? A lot of people have poor internet connections, many places world-over are basically mobile-internet only already, shared internet spaces with variable QoS (campuses), etc etc. Most people aren't using engineer-priced laptops/workstations or backed by enterprise-grade routing equipment, after all.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  If I understand Tor correctly, last mile connectivity is not a bottleneck.
  - ryanisnan 8y ago
    You are correct. Tor's speed has nothing to do with your local rig or network. Unless you're on an abacus.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
dbolgheroni 8y ago
Yes it is. I can't speak for everyone, but in Brazil, it's virtually impossible to use Tor even for HTML-only websites. And I can say most people have a slower bandwidth than I.

mirimir 8y ago

This would be a privacy option for Firefox, not the default. But yes, Tor introduces latency and reduces bandwidth. For traffic to the open Internet, traffic uses circuits through three relays: entry guard, middle and exit. So there are four hops between users and websites, instead of one. The Earth's circumference is about 40 thousand km. So the longest path is arguably ~20 thousand km. And rtt for that would be about 300-500 msec, according to my measurements.[0] It's only ~130 msec at lightspeed, but there are some copper links, plus switching time and caching. So with four hops, rtt would at most be 1200-2000 msec, if every hop were the maximum length. In practice, rtt for Tor is at most half that, and often even less. But latency is actually good if your goal is anonymity. Because it reduces the accuracy of traffic analysis. With traditional onion sites, there are two three-relay circuits, one for the user and one for the site, plus a rendezvous relay. So rtt is much greater. However, sites can opt for one-relay circuits, sacrificing anonymity, so overall rtt isn't that bad. Bandwidth is also reduced with Tor. Increased latency is part of that. But also, many relays have low-bandwidth uplinks, especially ones that people run at home. The Tor client does pick faster relays, but there's a tradeoff, in that doing so reduces anonymity. Increased investment in high-bandwidth relays would help a lot. Also, with more relays, it would be workable to implement multipath circuits. Especially for onion sites, where precious exit relays aren't needed. Using MPTCP, I managed ~50 Mbps throughput for bbcp transfers between onion sites (with gigabit uplinks).[1] I was getting ~36 subflows per tcp connection. 0) https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/how-to-verify-physical-locations-of-internet-servers https://www.ivpn.net/privacy-guides/how-to-verify-physical-l... 1) https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUDV2KHrAgs84oUc7z9zQmZ3whx1NB6YDPv8ZRuf4dutN/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmUDV2KHrAgs84oUc7z9zQmZ3whx1NB6YDPv8ZR...

ngold 8y ago
So basically satellite Internet speeds. That is pretty good.