6 ms·
Total relay bandwidth in the Tor network
For more historical perspective:
https://metrics.torproject.org/network.html?graph=bandwidth&start=2008-06-12&end=2013-12-11#bandwidth
- nly 13y agoThere was a good overview of how the network is actively managed, and who is providing new relays and the most bandwidth, at Defcon 21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=864FxA3jmHk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=864FxA3jmHk
- Ihmahr 13y agoYes, I have been considering i2p, the 'garlic router' which seems to have hedged against a lot of attacks that could be possible on tor.
- nly 13y agoI agree, I2P is interesting. I don't know why it doesn't get more press or support. According to the website some reps of the I2P team will be at 30C3 in 2 weeks time btw.
- Ihmahr 13y agoI have a theory, There are 7 directory authorities in Tor, if they don't function then the tor network is dead. So that is just seven people you would need to abduct and torture (to take over the tor network) or 7 drone strikes to kill all tor traffic. I am unsure but I think this is not the case for i2p. EDIT: So that might be a reason for NSA to support Tor over i2p.
- foobarqux 13y agoNo one uses I2P because it hasn't been deeply studied. No one studies it because no one uses it.
- belorn 13y agoisn't i2p simply tor but with 2 hops instead of 3?
- Ihmahr 13y agoNope, not at all.
- nly 13y agoYou can select your own circuit length.
- belorn 13y agoHow? The tech intro on the website describe tunnels (https://www.i2p2.de/techintro.html https://www.i2p2.de/techintro.html) with 3 parts. #1 is Alice the sender or Bob the receiver #2 is a participant #3 endpoint gateway Two such tunnels are used when Alice and bob communicate, for a total of 4 nodes for the communication between alice and bob. With tor hidden services, it is the exact same scheme, but with 4 nodes per tunnel rather than 3. (or 3 nodes rather than 2 if you do not want to count alice/bob as nodes). In total, 6 nodes between is used for the alice and bob communication. (https://www.torproject.org/docs/hidden-services.html.en https://www.torproject.org/docs/hidden-services.html.en) Please explain how this is incorrect. Is the tunnels as describe the I2P documentation just illustrations of how an tunnel might look like, but isn't actually how it is in practice? How does it solve the problem that tor fixes with guard nodes (as this is the context in the above comments and article)? I am much interesting in I2P, but the above details/questions has held me back.
- nly 13y agoThe client always selects the route on any onion routing network. They have to, because only they know the route. It's been a while since I played with I2P, but i'm 95% certain you can put push the circuit length up
- arpstick 13y agoYou can have more than 1 participating hop Let's say we have Alice and Bob, alice wants to have 4 hops both outbound and inbound and Bob wants to have a 2 hop inbound and a 1 hop outbound Alice's tunnels would be: Alice -> Participant A1 -> Participant A2 -> Participant A3 -> Outbound Endpoint 1 -> ? Alice <- Participant A4 <- Participant A5 <- Participant A6 <- Inbound Gateway 1 <- ? Bob's tunnels would be: Bob -> Outbound Gateway 2 -> ? Bob <- Participant B1 <- Inbound Gateway 2 <- ? For Alice to send to Bob and receive a reply the round trip path of the message would take would be Alice -> PA1 -> PA2 -> PA3 -> OBEP1 -> IBGW2 -> PB1 -> Bob -> OBEP2 -> IBGW1 -> PA6 -> PA5 -> PA4 -> Alice
- anonymousDan 13y agoGiven the need for critical mass, is there any way some or all of the advantages of i2p could be retrofitted to tor, or are the differences more fundamental?
- Ihmahr 13y agoI am not sure but I think the differences are too fundamental. But it would probably benefit anonymity to merge multiple projects.
- belorn 13y agoFor additional information: https://blog.torproject.org/category/tags/entry-guards https://blog.torproject.org/category/tags/entry-guards
- slashdotaccount 13y agoAccording to the "Full Disclosure - The Internet Dark Age" paper (1) the N.S.A. can route a target who is using Tor into their "own" Tor network where they control all the nodes, thus compromising the security of the target. Does anybody knows how one can be sure that he is in the legitimate Tor network and not a fake one? (1) http://cryptome.org/2013/12/Full-Disclosure.pdf http://cryptome.org/2013/12/Full-Disclosure.pdf
- nly 13y agoThe Tor consensus is digitally signed. That entire 'paper' looks like sensationalist garbage. A paragraph on each topic with no sources or analysis does not qualify as research.
- kyboren 13y agoAgreed. As I wrote in another thread: > I also do not think their claims of Tor subversion hold water. From what I understand of Tor, directory information (including nodes' key fingerprints) is ultimately verified by the hard-coded keys of very few "trusted" operators of authoritative directory servers. So long as the Tor software isn't compromised, no MITM, regardless of where it's effected, will be able to subvert the user's circuit construction (of course, barring bugs in Tor and exploits higher up in the software stack). At least, that's my understanding. However, I do assume they are very interested in capturing both short-term directory signing keys and the long-term keys which verify those short-term keys. This means the Tor servers listed as "dirservers" in src/or/confic.c, but especially the nodes tor26, dizum, Tonga, gabelmoo, maatuska, dannenberg, and Faravahar, as they appear located outside the US and so probably "game on" for NSA. I also assume NSA's "partners" will try the same with those authoritative directory servers in the US, which NSA would undoubtedly use to enhance their capabilities. Those who run authoritative directory servers need to be very careful (cough Appelbaum cough). The paper's main conclusion, "NSA/GCHQ can surreptitiously selectively MITM users' Internet connections", appears to be valid (see FOXACID servers and NSA's "man-on-the-side" attack), but this is a well-known threat model. In my non-professional opinion, the most likely way NSA/GCHQ would attack Tor appear to be through: 1) Honeypot nodes -- Tor relays which act normally, but silently record timing and circuit routing information ("circuit 2981: $253DFF1838A2B7782BE7735F74E50090D46CA1BC -> $1041213B53CCF586093BB65D9CC4BC0B9656EF17 @t=1386775503.00312") 2) "Upstream" data analysis of regular node connections -- build statistical models of likelihood of a client circuit routing from input node X to output node Y by observing timing of transmission rate bursts 3) CNE of non-US Tor nodes -- Pwn foreign nodes to turn regular nodes into honeypots And so I wonder: it appears little can be done about 1) and 3) above what's already being done (other than emphasizing to relay operators that Tor relays should be run on an isolated system with as few open services as possible). Tor maintainers seem to see vulnerability to 2) as a fundamental problem with low-latency mixnets, and haven't taken steps (AFAIK) to complicate that analysis. Would it be effective to do something like the following? 1) Propagate relay-to-relay latency and jitter statistics along with client circuit data 2) Have each relay build a model of incoming latency and jitter statistics for each other relay 3) Associate each new client circuit on a relay with a latency and jitter bin selected uniformly at random from the models built in 2), excluding the model associated with the true incoming relay 4) Delay all packets in that circuit by the associated latency time, +/- jitter calculated from a probability distribution created in the associated model of 2) This might be in combination with a change that removes or smooths bandwidth spikes by inserting dummy traffic between relays. With both strategies, a) latency would be worse, and b) total available bandwidth would be lower. It looks like there's considerably more advertised bandwidth than there is used bandwidth, so b) might be OK. But a) might be a big problem for usability. One more harebrained scheme: have each relay pick a few 'buddy' relays whose total advertised available buddy bandwidth sums to ~50% of this relay's estimated bandwidth. For each new client circuit, flip a coin and determine whether this circuit's traffic will be forwarded directly, or given to a buddy to forward. Similarly, the buddies each do the same with this relay. Associate 'chosen' client circuits with a buddy that tends to make a symmetric and smooth bi-directional data flow between the buddies. OK, stream of consciousness over... I really got off on a tangent. I'm very interested to see why my lame schemes won't work, so please point out why I'm wrong (as I assume I probably am) :).
- bernatfp 13y agoI don't like how this title oversimplifies the causes of growth to be the NSA scandal. I guess Silk Road also played an important role in this increase and it is not mentioned.
- john-p 13y agoloading speed is still too slow for daily use really.
- dublinben 13y agoHave you done your part to improve that by contributing a relay?
- belorn 13y agoUsing tor on a daily basis depend on how people surf the web. If you are one of those people who click on news article all day long, maybe read comments, then the added latency do not really do anything. You go to HN, open in new tabs all the interesting articles you want to read. By the time you reach the end of HN front page, the first page is loaded.