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authorRoger Dingledine <arma@torproject.org>2009-05-05 08:53:12 -0400
committerNick Mathewson <nickm@torproject.org>2009-05-05 08:53:12 -0400
commit09c6ef487a20a1553afb58e891f40daacf17367e (patch)
treebd7888dcfb27f18324b680f0af2ee5d4367f5df5 /proposals/160-bandwidth-offset.txt
parent1a082d81cfd9b2149196c16d8618aedbcbcd6ae1 (diff)
downloadtorspec-09c6ef487a20a1553afb58e891f40daacf17367e.tar.gz
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add a new proposal for authorities to vote for bandwidth "offsets"
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+Filename: 160-bandwidth-offset.txt
+Title: Authorities vote for bandwidth offsets in consensus
+Version: $Revision$
+Last-Modified: $Date$
+Author: Roger Dingledine
+Created: 4-May-2009
+Status: Open
+Target: 0.2.2.x
+
+1. Motivation
+
+ As part of proposal 141, we moved the bandwidth value for each relay
+ into the consensus. Now clients can know how they should load balance
+ even before they've fetched the corresponding relay descriptors.
+
+ Putting the bandwidth in the consensus also lets the directory
+ authorities choose more accurate numbers to advertise, if we come up
+ with a better algorithm for deciding weightings.
+
+ Our original plan was to teach directory authorities how to measure
+ bandwidth themselves; then every authority would vote for the bandwidth
+ it prefers, and we'd take the median of votes as usual.
+
+ The problem comes when we have 7 authorities, and only a few of them
+ have smarter bandwidth allocation algorithms. So long as the majority
+ of them are voting for the number in the relay descriptor, the minority
+ that have better numbers will be ignored.
+
+2. Options
+
+ One fix would be to demand that every authority also run the
+ new bandwidth measurement algorithms: in that case, part of the
+ responsibility of being an authority operator is that you need to run
+ this code too. But in practice we can't really require all current
+ authority operators to do that; and if we want to expand the set of
+ authority operators even further, it will become even more impractical.
+ Also, bandwidth testing adds load to the network, so we don't really
+ want to require that the number of concurrent bandwidth tests match
+ the number of authorities we have.
+
+ The better fix is to allow certain authorities to specify that they are
+ voting on bandwidth "offsets": how much they think the weight should
+ be changed for the relay in question. We should put the offset vote in
+ the stanza for the relay in question, so a given authority can choose
+ which relays to express preferences for and which not.
+
+3. Security implications
+
+ If only some authorities choose to vote on an offset, then a majority of
+ those voting authorities can arbitrarily change the bandwidth weighting
+ for the relay. At the extreme, if there's only one offset-voting
+ authority, then that authority can dictate which relays clients will
+ find attractive.
+
+ This problem isn't entirely new: we already have the worry wrt
+ the subset of authorities that vote for BadExit.
+
+ To make it not so bad, we should deploy at least three offset-voting
+ authorities.
+
+ Also, authorities that know how to vote for offsets should vote for
+ an offset of zero for new nodes, rather than choosing not to vote on
+ any offset in those cases.
+
+4. Design
+
+ First, we need a new consensus method to support this new calculation.
+
+ Now v3 votes can have a new weight on the "w" line:
+ "Bandwidth_Offset=" INT.
+ Once we're using the new consensus method, the new way to compute the
+ Bandwidth weight is by taking the old vote (explained in proposal 141:
+ median, then choose the lower number in the case of ties), and adding
+ or subtracting the median offset (using the offset closer to 0 in the
+ case of ties, and with a sum of 0 if the sum is negative).
+
+ Then the actual consensus looks just the same as it did before,
+ so clients never have to know that this additional calculation is
+ happening.
+