multiple connections from identical IP addresses

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     I just checked out something I've suspected for a long time.  Although
it would seem that there should never be more than one ESTABLISHED connection
between two particular relays at a time, there might be more than one client
running at a particular IP address, thus leading to more than one connection
from that IP address to a particular relay's ORPort.  A quick snapshot of
ESTABLISHED state connections to my relay's ORPort showed a total of 2637
simultaneous connections.  Searching through them carefully, I counted 210
IP addresses that had more than one open connection to my relay's ORPort.
In most cases, a given IP address had only two connections open, but there
were many that had more.  In one case, I counted *34* open connections from
a single IP address to the ORPort.
     Why do I see so many simultaneously ESTABLISHED connections that are not
unique to specific IP addresses?  I didn't check the connections from my
relay to other relays' ORPorts, but I have a strong suspicion that I would
see a similar state of affairs, namely, that my tor instance would have
multiple outbound connections that went to duplicate IP addresses.  It seems
also likely that some outbound connections would duplicate inbound connections,
but I didn't check those either.
     So why is tor doing this?


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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