Re: Scott made me do it.

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     Hmmm...I'm not too sure that I should be blamed for this, but
nevertheless...
     On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:26:44 -0400 Andrew Lewman <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>A while ago there was a thread that devolved into "why does Tor still
>ship ancient privoxy?" and "why are you shipping polipo with the Tor
>Browser Bundle instead of current privoxy?"  For those interested, the
>thread is here, http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Jul-2009/msg00063.html.
>
>Scott had a good argument for why we should update the bundles to the
>latest privoxy, and I agree, we should.  But then I started thinking
>about why we needed a proxy at all.  Almost all browsers support socks5
>direct, isn't that faster than a middleman proxy?
>
>This got me thinking about why we put polipo in the TBB, but not the
>other packages.  The TBB "feels faster" when using Tor than using the
>installed Tor, Vidalia, and Privoxy.  However, I couldn't find any
>actual testing of performance of polipo vs. privoxy vs. socks5 direct.
>
>So I did it myself, in a loose manner.
>
>The raw data from Tamper Data as xml, proxy config files, and results in
>a spreadsheet are all contained in
>http://freehaven.net/~phobos/polipo-v-privoxy.tar.gz{.asc).  And yes,
>the ruby script is a quick and dirty hack.
>
>I tested a few scenarios:
>
>1) native polipo and privoxy without using Tor.
>2) polipo and privoxy forwarding to Tor localhost:9050.
>3) firefox socks5 direct to Tor via localhost:9050.
>
>The summary of results:
>
>1) Native polipo is 54.5% faster on average than native privoxy.  This
>could be due to polipo's caching, http 1.1 pipelining, and it can serve
>bits as fast as they come in from the network.  Privoxy needs to load
>the whole page, scan it, and then send it to the client.  Even if
>privoxy filtering is disabled, it still works the same way.
>
>2) Polipo caching shines with Tor usage.  Common images are cached, and
>served from the memory cache in single-digit millisecond ranges.
>Privoxy needs to wait for Tor to wholly deliver the bits.  Caching is
>faster, this we know already.  However, from a user perspective, it's
>just faster to load pages.
>
>3) socks5 in Firefox 3.5.2 did better than I expected.
>
>4) I tried testing a click to a second page to see how much polipo
>caching helps people reading different pages on the same site.  It
>helps, but not as much as I expected.
>
>Caveats:  Testing under tor is highly variable.  I used the same
>circuits for both the polipo and privoxy tests to minimize variability.
> However, I can't control node load and congestion.
>
     Thanks, Andrew, for posting these results.  They are certainly
interesting and helpful.
     To get back to your question of why we need a proxy between a browser
and tor, though, I would like to point out once again that privoxy has a
lot of good, rule-based filtering.  I especially appreciate the filters'
ability to block out well over 90% of the advertising on the web, while
leaving the viewer the options to see why an object on a page was blocked,
assuming that one can make heads or tails of the peculiar Martian dialect
in which the filter rules are written, and to go ahead and show the blocked
object anyway.
     I have not used polipo ever and therefore cannot make any intelligent
comments about its usefulness as an intermediate proxy.

>Out of 23 get requests for the Torproject.org/index.html.en, 17 are for
>the country flags.   Perhaps we should load these last at the bottom of
>the page, or do something else to speed up the torproject page load.

     I think Kasimir's torstatus pages suffer from something quite similar.
>
>As I was doing this, I kept thinking of other ways to do it better;
>
>1) time requests and bits between tor, the http proxy, and the browser.
> How long does each request take to get from the browser, to the proxy,
>to tor and back across each layer?  how much latency does each piece of
>software add to the request and delivery?
>
>2) automate testing and let it run on a normal tor client over weeks.
>This will average out tor network variability and show "typical" user
>experience.
>
>3) Pick a sampling of the top 100 websites by visits worldwide and
>measure their performance with the three methods, fully instrumented as
>in #1.
>
>4) Do user experience measurements.  Pay/ask/bribe people to sit in
>front of a computer, video record their browsing and feedback, and ask
>for a rating of each configuration (socks5, polipo, privoxy, and a placebo).
>
>5) re-run #2 and run gcov to watch the code paths used in each piece of
>software, and figure out what can be optimized for performance.
>
>6) test various "private browsing modes" through tor to see which
>browser is faster; firefox, safari, chromium, torfox, or torora.
>
>7) how can we better tune polipo caching dynamically based on system ram
>config?  Does having 1GB of cache provide significant benefits over the
>default?
>
>I'm sure there are lots of things wrong with my measurements, minimal
>analysis, and results.
>
>Constructive criticism is welcome.
>
     All of the above look good.  However, one obvious set of tests does
not appear above, namely, to test the use of the various proxies without tor.
This would allow more direct comparisons of the proxies' performance without
the circuit-dependent variability one sees when using tor.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
**********************************************************************
* Internet:       bennett at cs.niu.edu                              *
*--------------------------------------------------------------------*
* "A well regulated and disciplined militia, is at all times a good  *
* objection to the introduction of that bane of all free governments *
* -- a standing army."                                               *
*    -- Gov. John Hancock, New York Journal, 28 January 1790         *
**********************************************************************