A frequently stated problem with Tor is the poor performance and improving this is the goal of several sub-projects. One of these is to simply encourage the deployment of more Tor servers. This will increase the capacity of the network, but the consequent improvement to users is more difficult to estimate. The intuitive hypothesis -- that a n% increase in network capacity will result in an n% increase in performance for users -- is almost certainly wrong. In fact, the defining factor is how the number of users scales with the available bandwidth -- a currently unknown function. I discuss this way of looking at Tor as well as the consequences and limitations of the approach in a blog post published today: http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2007/07/18/economics-of-tor-performance/ As always, comments and suggestions, either here on the list or on the blog, are appreciated. Steven. -- w: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
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