[tahoe-dev] switching from introducers to gossip?

[Michael Rogers]

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On 11/07/12 14:02, James A. Donald wrote:
>> It seems people are only aware of the last feature because of
>> the poorly chosen name.  IMO, the "hidden" aspect is one of the
>> less interesting features.  I've heard a rumor that there's a
>> proposal to make a version of this feature which provides the
>> other features without the hidden part for the benefit of lower
>> latency.
> 
> This would be extremely convenient, for unhidden tor services could
> not only provide lower latency, but could handle high bandwidth.

I think it might be possible to handle this from the client side by
building circuits with fewer than three hops.

If I remember right, hidden services work something like this:

* Alice, a client running a hidden service, chooses several
introduction points and builds a circuit to each one
* Alice anonymously publishes the addresses of the introduction points
* Bob, a client wishing to contact Alice's hidden service, anonymously
retrieves the addresses of the introduction points
* Bob chooses a rendezvous point and builds a circuit to it
* Bob builds a circuit to one of Alice's introduction points and
informs Alice of the rendezvous point
* If Alice accepts the connection, she builds a circuit to Bob's
rendezvous point, which connects Alice's circuit to Bob's circuit
* Alice and Bob communicate through the connected circuits

Usually each circuit has three hops, but if Alice and Bob don't need
to be anonymous or unlinkable they can use one-hop circuits. The final
connection would have two hops: Alice <-> rendezvous point <-> Bob.

The client is responsible for choosing the length of the circuit in
Tor, so it should be possible to do this through a client library like
Silvertunnel without modifying the protocol or the relays.

Cheers,
Michael
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