[or-cvs] r22243: {website} write an actual research page for us (website/trunk/en)

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Author: arma
Date: 2010-04-26 02:52:41 +0000 (Mon, 26 Apr 2010)
New Revision: 22243

Modified:
   website/trunk/en/research.wml
Log:
write an actual research page for us


Modified: website/trunk/en/research.wml
===================================================================
--- website/trunk/en/research.wml	2010-04-26 02:17:35 UTC (rev 22242)
+++ website/trunk/en/research.wml	2010-04-26 02:52:41 UTC (rev 22243)
@@ -9,11 +9,112 @@
 <h2>Tor: Research</h2>
 <hr />
 
-<p>Read <a
-href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/topic.html#Anonymous_20communication";>these
-papers</a> (especially the ones in boxes) to get up to speed on anonymous
-communication systems.</p>
+<p>
+Many people around the world are doing research on how to improve the Tor
+design, what's going on in the Tor network, and more generally on attacks
+and defenses for anonymous communication systems. This page summarizes
+the resources we provide to help make your Tor research more effective.
+The best way to reach us about research is through the <a href="<page
+contact>">tor-assistants</a> list.
+</p>
 
+<ul>
+
+<li>
+<b>Data.</b>
+We've been <a href="http://metrics.torproject.org/data.html";>collecting
+data to learn more about the Tor network</a>: how many relays and
+clients there are in the network, what capabilities they have, how
+fast the network is, how many clients are connecting via bridges,
+what traffic exits the network, etc. We are also developing
+tools to process these huge data archives and come up with
+<a href="http://metrics.torproject.org/graphs.html";>useful
+statistics</a>.  For example, we provide a <a
+href="https://gitweb.torproject.org//ernie.git?a=blob_plain;f=doc/manual.pdf";>tool
+called Ernie</a> that can import relay descriptors into a local database
+to perform analyses. Let us know what other information you'd like to
+see, and we can work with you to help make sure it gets collected safely
+and robustly.
+</li>
+
+<li>
+<b>Analysis.</b>
+If you're investigating Tor, or solving a Tor-related problem,
+<i>_please_</i> talk to us somewhere along the way &mdash; the earlier
+the better. These days we review too many conference paper submissions
+that make bad assumptions and end up solving the wrong problem. Since
+the Tor protocol and the Tor network are both moving targets, measuring
+things without understanding what's going on behind the scenes is going
+to result in bad conclusions. In particular, different groups often
+unwittingly run a variety of experiments in parallel, and at the same
+time we're constantly modifying the design to try new approaches. If
+you let us know what you're doing and what you're trying to learn,
+we can help you understand what other variables to expect and how to
+interpret your results.
+</li>
+
+<li>
+<b>Measurement and attack tools.</b>
+We're building a <a
+href="http://metrics.torproject.org/tools.html";>repository</a> of tools
+that can be used to measure, analyze, or perform attacks on Tor. Many
+research groups end up needing to do similar measurements (for example,
+change the Tor design in some way and then see if latency improves),
+and we hope to help everybody standardize on a few tools and then make
+them really good. Also, while there are some really neat Tor attacks
+that people have published about, it's hard to track down a copy of
+the code they used. Let us know if you have new tools we should list,
+or improvements to the existing ones. The more the better, at this stage.
+</li>
+
+<li>
+<b>In-person help.</b>
+If you're doing interesting and important Tor research and need help
+understanding how the Tor network or design works, interpreting your
+data, crafting your experiments, etc, we can send a Tor researcher to
+your doorstep. As you might expect, we don't have a lot of free time;
+but making sure that research is done in a way that's useful to us is
+really important. So let us know, and we'll work something out.
+</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<a id="Groups"></a>
+<h2><a class="anchor" href="#Ideas">Research Groups</a></h2>
+
+<p>Interested to find other anonymity researchers? Here are some
+research groups you should take a look at.</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>Ian Goldberg's <a href="http://crysp.uwaterloo.ca/";>CrySP</a> group
+at Waterloo.
+</li>
+<li><a href="http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~hopper/";>Nick Hopper</a>'s
+group at UMN.
+</li>
+<li><a href="http://www.hatswitch.org/~nikita/";>Nikita Borisov</a>'s
+group at Illinois.
+</li>
+<li>Matt Wright's <a href="http://isec.uta.edu/";>iSec</a> group at
+UTA.
+</li
+</ul>
+
+<a id="Ideas"></a>
+<h2><a class="anchor" href="#Ideas">Research Ideas</a></h2>
+
+<p>
+If you're interested in anonymity research, you must make it to the
+<a href="http://petsymposium.org/";>Privacy Enhancing Technologies
+Symposium</a>. Everybody who's anybody in the anonymity research world
+will be there. The 2010 conference is in Berlin in July. Stipends are
+available for people whose presence will benefit the community.
+</p>
+
+<p>To get up to speed on anonymity research, read <a
+href="http://freehaven.net/anonbib/";>these papers</a> (especially the
+ones in boxes).</p>
+
 <p>We need people to attack the system, quantify defenses,
 etc. See the "Research" section of the
 <a href="<page volunteer>#Research">volunteer</a> page.</p>