Ian Goldberg iang@cs.uwaterloo.ca wrote:
On Sun, Jul 01, 2012 at 05:29:04PM +0200, Fabian Keil wrote:
So if only a handful of clientshave upgraded to a TBB that supports it (none does at this time), they'll stand out. That's why the default is "use the consensus value", which is currently off. The consensus value can be turned on later, when "enough" people can support it.
The default can be changed, though, and while the man page contains recommendations and even strong recommendation for other parameter values, there's no recommendation for or against changing the OptimisticData settings and the risks aren't mentioned either.
The TorBrowser isn't the only client that could optimistically send data and other clients (like Privoxy) will need an option for this, that the user has to explicitly enable.
It's inappropriate for Privoxy's documentation to make recommendations for or against modifications of Tor's OptimisticData option, therefore it would be great if the Tor man page contained such a recommendation so the Privoxy documentation can link to it without putting the user at risk of changing the option after reading Tor's man page without understanding the consequences.
Does Privoxy support optimistic data? SOCKS clients (TBB, Privoxy, IM clients, etc.) need to be modified in order to use this feature of Tor, as it entails the client sending the data to the SOCKS proxy (the Tor OP) *before* receiving the SOCKS connection response from it.
I implemented (partial) optimistic data support for Privoxy about a year ago. The code hasn't been committed to the official repository due to the documentation challenge outlined above.
Fabian