new proposals: params in consensus, and lower circwindow

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+Filename: 167-params-in-consensus.txt
+Title: Vote on network parameters in consensus
+Author: Roger Dingledine
+Created: 18-Aug-2009
+Status: Open
+Target: 0.2.2
+
+0. History
+
+
+1. Overview
+
+  Several of our new performance plans involve guessing how to tune
+  clients and relays, yet we won't be able to learn whether we guessed
+  the right tuning parameters until many people have upgraded. Instead,
+  we should have directory authorities vote on the parameters, and teach
+  Tors to read the currently recommended values out of the consensus.
+
+2. Design
+
+  V3 votes should include a new "params" line after the known-flags
+  line. It contains key=value pairs, where value is an integer.
+
+  Consensus documents that are generated with a sufficiently new consensus
+  method (7?) then include a params line that includes every key listed
+  in any vote, and the median value for that key (in case of ties,
+  we use the median closer to zero).
+
+2.1. Planned keys.
+
+  The first planned parameter is "circwindow=101", which is the initial
+  circuit packaging window that clients and relays should use. Putting
+  it in the consensus will let us perform experiments with different
+  values once enough Tors have upgraded -- see proposal 168.
+
+  Later parameters might include a weighting for how much to favor quiet
+  circuits over loud circuits in our round-robin algorithm; a weighting
+  for how much to prioritize relays over clients if we use an incentive
+  scheme like the gold-star design; and what fraction of circuits we
+  should throw out from proposal 151.
+
+2.2. What about non-integers?
+
+  I'm not sure how we would do median on non-integer values. Further,
+  I don't have any non-integer values in mind yet. So I say we cross
+  that bridge when we get to it.
+