Re: CN's nodes lookin' uncool, do they?

[Andrew <tor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Roger Dingledine wrote:
>> The chinese routers daily raise and fall and their massive proportion of
>> exit nodes looks like sort of 'work-day-behavior-of-the-exit-spy':
>> https://tor.xenobite.eu:82/mrtg-torstat/torstat-routers-cn-day.png
>
> Here's an alternative to the conspiracy theory:
>
> Notice that many of the China nodes have the nickname 'Unnamed'. This
> is what you'll get if you don't set a Nickname -- for example, if you
> click the "turn me into a server" button in Vidalia. Also, you use the
> default exit policy when you click that button in Vidalia.
>
> It's already been established informally through other measurements
> that we have tens of thousands of Tor users in China. So the alternative
> theory is that a slightly larger (but still quite small) percentage of
> Chinese users have chosen to click the button in Vidalia.
Tor users, agreed. Tor servers... seems pretty unlikely to me. Why would
our Chinese friends be more "generous" in setting up exit nodes than the
rest of us? Honestly , it doesn't make any sense at all. Yes, it is very
likely that we've got a much higher proportion of tor users in china
than in, say, Old Europe - because the internet is being censored, and
thus tor becomes even more useful; it's not just protecting your ID, but
also giving you access to otherwise restricted content.
But does it make sense for someone with a censored internet access to
set up an exit node? A node, yes. Doesn't matter where the traffic is
being routed through. But an exit node, no. Why would I confront others
with the censorship I myself am trying to evade?
Doesn't make much sense to me.
>> https://torstat.xenobite.eu/showstatistics.php
> Nice stats pages!
Agreed! Thanks for sharing the link.

Andrew

--
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - *Thomas
Watson*, Chairman of *IBM*, *1943*.