Re: Question for DEVs -- Write/Read Limiting

["Joseph B. Kowalski" <jbk@xxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 07:20:16 -0800 Nick Mathewson 
<nickm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 09:16:25PM -0500, Roger Dingledine wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 15, 2007 at 01:51:58PM -0800, Joseph B. Kowalski 
>wrote:
> [...]
>> > Or is it something entirely 
>> > different? If it is different, can we get a short explanation 
>of 
>> > the changes? Also, if it is different, is there a config file 
>> > setting that would make a server behave the way it did before 
>these 
>> > changes were implemented?
>> 
>> Nope. I had a plan to let people configure their 
>BandwidthRateRead
>> and BandwidthRateWrite separately, but Nick convinced me it 
>would be a
>> headache to handle even more combinations and permutations.
>
>To elaborate: there are some sane combinations, and some insane 
>ones.
>For example, there's no good way to support having a read limit 
>that's
>significantly higher than your write limit (since if we do that,
>servers will read traffic they can't relay), but it's easy to 
>support a
>write limit that's higher than your read limit (we did it before, 
>and
>it seemed to work fine).
>
>So why not implement just higher write limits?  Two reasons.  
>First,
>there's an interface issue: if there's a feature to set a high 
>write
>limit, people will expect that setting a low write limit will work
>too.  Second, there's a lack of demand: most people with 
>asymmetric
>bandwidth (like ADSL and cable modem customers) have higher 
>bandwidth
>for reading than writing, not the other way around.
>
>> If you wanted to think hard about that and send us a patch, I 
>bet we'd
>> accept it.
>
>Agreed.  Also, a documentation patch or FAQ entry would also be 
>keen.
>
>> > My apologies if this is explained somewhere already and I've 
>missed 
>> > it.
>> 
>> Hope that helps,
>> --Roger
>
>Yrs,
>-- 
>Nick Mathewson


Ok, thanks for giving such complete answers Roger & Nick. I updated 
sections 5.17 and 5.18 of the FAQ at:

http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ

to remove the points talking about how only incoming bytes are 
considered during bandwidth regulation.


Regards,


Joe