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Re: FW: I still do not understand...



On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 11:39:44PM -0400, Roger Dingledine wrote:
> > At least leave it up to the local node. Make an unpublished / unlisted
> > option just as in pots, and not for testing purposes.
> 
> You're free to run an unlisted node. Add
> 
> NoPublish 1
> 
> to your torrc, and it won't upload your descriptor to the central
> dirservers. Then clients can get your descriptor out-of-band, import
> it via the controller interface, and use it however they like. Heck,
> you can even go a step farther and specify your own dirservers. Or use
> the three that we provide plus a fourth sekrit one. Tor aims to be a
> unifying protocol, and people can build whatever topologies they want on
> top of it. We also happen to provide one such example topology currently.

I think that it is worth mentioning that I am already working on one
such alternate topology.  My PhD thesis research (Blossom) includes
using .exit notation, "NoPublish 1", and the controller interface to
extend Tor to arbitrary connected topologies.

http://afs.eecs.harvard.edu/~goodell/blossom/

The default topology provided by the Tor network is a fully-connected
mesh, i.e. Tor presumes that all routers should be able to use the
Internet to reach each other directly.  This means, among other things,
that pairs of Tor servers cannot exist across NATs, certain
overly-restrictive firewalls, or core routers that filter traffic
destined to one server or the other.  Despite our better efforts, the
Internet becomes increasingly "fragmented" in this way, often as
businesses and ISPs decide that breaking the end-to-end principle is the
most convenient way to increase their degree of control over network
traffic.

So, we use Tor not so much for the anonymity properties (though arguably
such properties provide us with a stronger sense that fragmentation will
not occur within the Blossom network), but instead for the inherent
property that we can use Tor to see the world from the perspective of a
particular Tor node somewhere far away in the Internet.  This ability
provides a means by which we can conveniently design a system for
transporting TCP traffic that has properties of locality, universal
access, and distributed management.

Please let me know if you find this interesting or have any questions.

Geoff

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