Re: TOR plus a P2P application SHAREAZA

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

On Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 08:45:24AM -0400, Euseval@aol.com wrote:
> Gnutellanodes by the way would increse the network of TOR and the
>rendevous points and nodes.

The current Tor architecture doesn't scale to the point that it could
be included in a p2p client. Tor as it stands right now is designed for
a group of servers to provide service to a reasonably small (tens of
thousands at most) group of clients.

Only by limiting who can be a relay can we provide the relatively strong
threat model that Tor currently assumes. (I say relatively, because
high-latency systems such as Mixminion have a much stronger threat model.)

If we relax this limit and let anybody become a relay, then we open
ourselves up to Sybil attacks (http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#sybil). Also,
a highly scaled system is less useful for long-term connections like ssh,
because most participants are flaky so circuits can't last very long.

It's an open research question whether we can scale the network and
still provide similar security. Hopefully we'll figure out how to do it
soon, and switch to a new design. I wouldn't hold your breath, though.

--Roger