Re: [RFC] Campaign »Buy/Sponsor a relay.«

[andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 09:24:54PM -0800, atagar1@xxxxxxxxx wrote 8.3K bytes in 180 lines about:
: Hence, as long as any hosting entity properly set the 'Family' parameter, I
: think we should welcome this sort of hired-relay-operation. The proper
: countermeasure for this problem (imho) would be to grant relays an implied
: family based on geoip data and known ISP/hoster ip ranges (ie, don't make my
: circuit through multiple relays hosted by Comcast or, say, in the US).

Yes, and there's some research into Autonomous System (AS) level
routing and aggregation concerns.  

This whole "sponsor a relay" concept has come up internally in the past.
The idea is based on the assumption that there are organizations with
more money then technical skill willing to fund someone to run a relay
for some defined period of time, bandwidth, etc.  I'm not sure this is
true at this point in time.

However, this doesn't mean that starting a marketplace or exchange where
people with some money can meet people with technical skill in operating
a relay is a bad idea.  It's a fine experiment to learn about the demand
from both ends, and figure out what the market would decide on pricing
for slow/fast relays, non-exit/exit relays, branded/Unnamed relays, and
reliability and uptime.  Of course, this could also introduce some
interesting incentives to cheat.

Coldbot in the UK is the first such market. I wonder if they'll
share how it is going so far.  

-- 
Andrew Lewman
The Tor Project
pgp 0x31B0974B

Website: https://www.torproject.org/
Blog: https://blog.torproject.org/
Identi.ca: torproject
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