Re: [tor-relays] [Looking for feedback] An easier way to declare families

On Sat, Nov 6, 2021 at 10:36 AM Nick Mathewson <nickm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hello, relay operators!

I'm hoping to get some feedback from relay operators, particularly
those who use the MyFamily option, about the best way to deploy
proposal 321. You can read the proposal at:

https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/master/proposals/321-happy-families.md

The main idea of this proposal is to provide an easier way for
relays to declare that they are in the same family. With proposal
321, each relay in the same family uses a cryptographic certificate
to prove that it is in the same family as the others.

(That's just a summary; see the full proposal at the link above for
a write up of how it works, an a description of backwards
compatibility issues.)

Now, my question is, how can we make this approach as usable as possible?
There are several different ways that we could have it work in practice:

A relay operator has asked me, offline, if it is possible under this proposal for a relay to belong to more than one family. (For example, if there were two relay operators who each operated some relays on their own, but also operated some relays jointly, it might make sense to put the jointly operated relays into _both_ of the operators' families .)

This is something that the proposal currently supports, but there are a couple of limitations I was wondering about:

1) The proposal currently limits each relay to no more than 3 families. Is that a reasonable upper bound?

2) We hadn't been planning to implement multi-family support right away, though I could if needed. Is that something that many operators would want?

best wishes,

Nick