Re: eliminating bogus port 43 exits

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     On Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:32:24 -0400 Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 03:51:25PM -0700, Kyle Williams wrote:
>> I think "snooping" and "statistical information" should be treated
>> differently.  Take Scott's case here.  He is making a claim that by using
>> the exit policy outlined above, it would reduce the amount of traffic on tor
>> by 70% or whatever.  What I would like to see proof of is that the IP
>> addresses that are now being blocked are NOT running a WHOIS services.  How
>> do we know for sure that they are not in fact a valid WHOIS service?
>
>I would also be curious to learn the mean/median number of bytes that
>a given connection to port 43 takes. If it's a tiny amount, then it

     Yes, that would be helpful to know.

>probably isn't responsible for 70% of Tor's traffic. If it's huge,
>then perhaps that means people are file-sharing over port 43.

     Something appears to have gotten altered in transmission here.  I don't
think I suggested any particular fraction of the tor network's traffic be
attributed to port 43, but maybe someone did.  What I was suggesting was that
the number of exit connections would well be over 70% of the total exit
connections for exit policies similar to mine.  My exit policy, for example,
allows port 80 (http) exits for a finite set of IP addresses, which results
in small, but non-zero, exit counts for port 80.  Nevertheless, the *burden*
upon the tor network is not the same as the traffic volume.  The burden of
constructing untold millions of illegitimate circuits and tearing them down
later is something that I doubt has been calculated.  Obviously, though, you
would be far more likely to know whether such calculations have been performed
than would I.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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