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Re: Welcome to mixminion-dev



Hi, and sorry about the delay.  I've been hacking. :)

On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 06:52:45PM -0500, Robert Guerra wrote:
 [...]
> 1. integration with existing email clients - either via a plugin, or 
> via proxy type server.
> 
> Are there , for example any plans for a Mozilla and/or thunderbird plugin?

People have proposed plans, but so far as I know, none have progressed
beyond the wouldn't-that-be-nice level.  As far as I know, nobody's
working on a plug-in right now.  George has checked in some example
POP/SMTP/IMAP proxy code in src/minion/etc, but it definitely needs
more testing, auditing, and development.

For integration, the current CVS code includes a proposed (but not yet
implemented) API in ClientAPI.py; this may or may not be helpful to
people.

> 2. reliability stats - ie. Picking remailers that are in fact "up" 
> and can relay the message.
> 
> I've sent a couple of test messages through the network using the 
> basic/simple instructions that are available - and i've not had many 
> messages get received . Is there a setting that when picking a server 
> , preferentially picks high uptime servers ?
> 
> Hope to participate in this list, and hope that can bring all the 
> work that's been done to the field workers that could use it.

For reasons unknown, the last month or so has seen a drop-off in
reliability.  The current (v0.0.7.1) directory code *does* try to
track server liveness, but only in the most naive sense: servers are
listed as "recommended" in a directory if they are running when the
directory is generated -- neither past history nor ability to relay
nor ability to deliver mail are considered.

This should be mitigated with 0.0.8; as of yesterday, the CVS code
includes working support for built-in reliability probing, using the
same algorithms as the popular "echolot" remailer pinger.  More work
is needed in this area, but I think we're off to a good start here.
In particular, the code should check mail delivery as well as packet
relay, but it doesn't yet.  Also, Danezis and Sassaman's work on
Red-Green-Black Mixes would make a natural addition.

[1] http://freehaven.net/anonbib/topic.html#danezis:wpes2003

hth,
-- 
Nick Mathewson

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