Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2015 18:56:01 +0200 From: Peter Palfrader weasel@torproject.org
Hi,
so, Tor has included a feature to fetch the initial consensus from nodes other than the authorities for a while now. We just haven't shipped a list of alternate locations for clients to go to yet.
Reasons why we might want to ship tor with a list of additional places where clients can find the consensus is that it makes authority reachability and BW less important.
At the last Tor dev meeting we came up with a list of arbitrary requirements that nodes should meet to be included in this list.
We want them to have been around and using their current key, address, and port for a while now (120 days), and have been running, a guard, and a v2 directory mirror for most of that time.
I have written a script to come up with a list of notes that match our criteria. It's currently at https://www.palfrader.org/volatile/fallback-dir/get-fallback-dir-candidates
It currently produces https://www.palfrader.org/volatile/2015-04-17-VjBkc8DWV8c/list
Discuss :)
Peter, your list only includes the IPv4 addresses of the directories. Can you include the IPv6 addresses as well, like: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8374#comment:8
If we can get a list we're happy with, I propose we distribute them in a similar fashion to the geoip file, a flat file provided with the distribution. This would require a torrc option for the location of the file.
(I don't think signing the file has a specific threat model: the list of directory authorities themselves could almost as easily be modified in the code before a build.)
Do we need to contact the operator of each directory mirror for permission?
teor
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