Re: [tor-bugs] #4771 [BridgeDB]: bridgedb should make clearer in its logs which addresses it knows are from bulk-exitlist

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#4771: bridgedb should make clearer in its logs which addresses it knows are from
bulk-exitlist
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     Reporter:  arma      |      Owner:  isis
         Type:  defect    |     Status:  assigned
     Priority:  minor     |  Milestone:
    Component:  BridgeDB  |    Version:
   Resolution:            |   Keywords:  isis2015Q1Q2, isisExB, isisExC
Actual Points:            |  Parent ID:
       Points:            |
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Comment (by isis):

 Replying to [comment:7 arma]:
 > Oh. So we are no longer documenting anywhere which pool a bridge was in?

 Correct. I have an email from Karsten on 8 December 2014 which said that
 Karsten had disabled the code for yatei to sanitise BridgeDB's
 assignments.log files, and that the code would be removed entirely from
 metrics-lib within a couple days if nothing broke.

 > The goal there was to be able to answer research questions like "which
 distribution strategies cause bridges to get blocked quickly, or cause
 bridges to get lots of use" or similar questions.
 >

 Right; I understand and agree. But the system we had for doing that was
 ''really'' slow for both the BridgeDB and Metrics servers. Not to mention
 ''really'' buggy.

 I don't think that we shouldn't do it; I just think that if we are to do
 it again, then we probably want to reopen #2755. I would opt for storing
 the information in one of the databases for #12030 or #12031, and
 optionally providing some interface to the distributor assignment data,
 e.g. something like what you were asking for in #7877. And, actually, once
 #12506 is finished, we could do something like that without placing much
 extra load on BridgeDB (or, if we wanted to get really fancy, it could
 even be hosted on a separate BridgeMetrics machine).

 > So, if I asked you (1) which distribution strategies (https, https-to-
 Tor-IPs, email, etc) are being successful right now, how would you go
 about answering it?

 Wellâ if "successful" means "the highest ratio of real clients who are
 successfully given bridges to bot traffic and everything else", then I'd
 run some grep queries on the `bridgedb.log` file to find out those
 numbers. But what did you mean by "successful"?

 > And if I asked you (2) what the answer was last November, is the data
 that you'd use to answer question 1 gone for those trying to answer
 question 2?

 Well, for last November in particular there would not be an issue, because
 Metrics [https://collector.torproject.org/archive/bridge-pool-assignments/
 has data up until 8 December 2014]â however, that obviously isn't going to
 continue answering the question moving forward. (Also January and February
 2015 are forever missing.) There is also the issue that the current
 `assignments.log` implementation wouldn't exactly have answered these
 questions, since researchers would probably need a rounded number on how
 many seeming-unique clients BridgeDB has distributed a given bridge to
 within a given time period in order to correlate the effectiveness of any
 bridge distribution strategy to actual bridge client connections and/or
 bridge bandwidth usage.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4771#comment:8>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
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