On Fri, 20 May 2016 12:03:35 +0200
Rob van der Hoeven <robvanderhoeven@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This worries me. If in the future the router list grows, my router
> (and many other routers running Tor) can run out of memory. For me,
> it looks a little bit strange to have an in-memory database of the
> router list. Is there a reason for having this data in memory? And,
> can something be done about it?
What's strange about it. The client does the path selection. To build
a circuit, the client must know the public keys/ip/port for the entire
path and the exit policy.
A few things could be done:
* Figure out the necessary crytographic trickery to allow client
driven path selection without the full microdescriptor list a
la TvdW's recent-ish blog post.
* Work off the microdescriptors saved to non-volatile storage.
Intuitively this seems like a bad idea due to:
* This is a lot of code, for a niche use-case.
* Similar concerns apply to "the absolute minimum amount of flash
that the manufacturer thinks they can get away with" being too
small to hold the microdescriptor list.
* Most embedded devices probably don't want to be writing out the
microdescriptor list to non-volatile storage either, because
flash is garbage.
* Carry on keeping the working set in RAM under the assumption that
manufacturers will ship more RAM in their routers as time goes on.
Regards,
--
Yawning Angel
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