On Thu, May 14, 2015 at 08:01:19PM +0000, nusenu wrote:
Dear Tor BW Authories,
we'd like to bring the following issue to your attention. Since the last two weeks the amount of unmeasured relays is steadily rising [1].
Hello nusenu,
Thanks for the kick.
For other statistics, each hour I copy over the votes that moria1 sees: http://freehaven.net/~arma/moria1-v3-status-votes
And there's also https://consensus-health.torproject.org/#bwauthstatus
It is clear that the bwauth scripts are buggy and need a rewrite. And not just buggy -- I think their design is probably flawed too.
I know of several research groups who have been working on better bandwidth estimation schemes, with the main goal of making them more robust to cheating, but with the secondary goal of still being adequately accurate.
I had been hoping that one of those would be ready by now, but the research group I've been paying the most attention to has quite a bit of work left to do before they have a cheating-resistance estimation scheme that doesn't open up too many other problems.
Another hope we have is Aaron Gibson's upcoming OTF fellowship, which focuses on improving the bwauth system. I think we'll have to find the right balance there between a redesign, which would take a while but could be better for us in the long run, and bugfixes on the current system, which would help things in the short term but take time away from the redesign.
I'll call Aaron's attention to this thread too and see if he can provide some insights.
--Roger