Re: Bitblinder = Tor 2

[Andrew Lewman <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 06/13/2009 04:07 AM, Max wrote:
> Tor 2 is out: www.bitblinder.com
> it is faster. why? everyone is an exitnode or forwarder.
> What about changing the Tor 1 policy to be everyone as well an exit node by
> default?

Let's clarify this a bit.  Bitblinder is the same Tor just with
micropayments and 1-hop proxies.  Diff the bitblinder source code with
ours, it's not substantially different.  It's not "tor 2".

I think it's an interesting test of some theories we've been thinking
about already (reducing the number of hops, everyone as a relay,
incentives to be a relay).  There are also risks to each one of these
that we need to research and develop more to understand how they affect
risks to the user and others on the public Tor network.

As for why it's faster, I suspect it's because no one uses it yet.  Wait
until a few hundred thousand people show up and start swapping huge
files over it.  The current Tor network was pretty quick until a year or
two ago.  When we had roughly the same number of nodes but only 50,000
to 100,000 daily users it was great.  Now we're at 300,00 to 500,000
daily users and suffering under the load.  We have a roadmap to make the
Tor network significantly faster, it just takes research and development
(and funding) to do it right.  Tor at the end of this roadmap could be
considered "Tor 2".

I, for one, would feel horrible if we rushed to release something under
the pressure of "make it faster" and exposed all those who rely on Tor
for its strong anonymity properties.  I use tor for 95% of my Internet
traffic, I understand the speed issues very well.

-- 
Andrew Lewman
The Tor Project
pgp 0x31B0974B

Website: https://torproject.org/
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