Re: Load Balancing

[Robert Hogan <robert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday 21 September 2007 19:34:09 Alexander W. Janssen wrote:
> On 9/21/07, Arrakis <arrakistor@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Hey guys, quick question.
> >
> > If I have Tor process running, and request a url that has 10 images to
> > load from the same domain, do all the requests go through the same
> > circuit, or does the tor process split up the requests across all the
> > circuits?
>
> Interesting question. From what I understood a new circuit is created
> for every TCP-connection. If your browser grabs, for instance, 6
> images at the same time (6 loading instances == connections), Tor
> should open 6 different circuits.
>
> However, considering your question... It doesn't sound too efficient
> to me... The slides say "If the user wants to access a different site,
> Alice's Tor client selects a different path."
> I'm curious how strict I should read that...
>
> Site vs. TCP-connections?
>
> Alex.
>
The original question is answered later in the thread, but there is an 
interesting distinction between polipo and privoxy in the way this situation 
is handled:

- privoxy will use new streams on the same circuit for each of the images
- polipo will generally pipeline everything over the same stream

I believe this results in a perceptible performance improvement for general 
browsing. Someone please correct me if I've got this wrong, because I'm just 
working from observation.

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