Richard Dennis mad_raptor@hotmail.com writes:

Hi guys,

i have been doing a bit of reading recently about hidden services, and i am just wondering how exactly a hidden service selects its introduction points, i understand there are two methods, one where the H.S picks its own set of I.P's and one where this is done for the H.S., is this correct?

AFAIK, HSes pick their own set of intro points.

If so is there an algorithm for automatically selecting introduction points for a hidden service and is one method recommended over another, if so why?

Finally how many introduction points does a H.S. usually have, can a larger H.S. have more I.P's to deal with the traffic or is this not advised ?

See this thread for some more information on IPs: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-August/007335.html and specifically the "==How many IPs should an HS have?==" section.

FWIW, the relevant function is rend_services_introduce() in src/or/rendservice.c .