On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 10:53:48PM -0600, Jim wrote: > I connect to the Internet with dialup. I have been successfully using > Tor clients for 4+ years. One of the issues with using Tor over a slow > connection is the amount of time it takes to update the information > about the network when Tor is first started after having been off-line > for a while. Depending on connection speed and how long the client has > been off-line, this typically takes about 3 to 10 minutes. Perhaps a > bit longer. My experience is that during this time the connection is > pretty much useless for any other purpose.
Yep. > While inconvenient, this situation is certainly manageable. My concern > has been what happens as the Tor network grows. At some point the delay > would start being a serious problem. Here's some reading: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/overhead-directory-info%3A-past%2C-present%2C-future We haven't gotten the "microdescriptor" out in practice yet, but it's on its way: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1748 > Perhaps with a much larger Tor > network, each client doesn't actually have to know about all of the > nodes but can make do with a reasonably sized "sampling." Most ways to do this are bad news: http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#danezis-pet2008 But it probably is how the distant future will look: http://www.hatswitch.org/~nikita/papers/shadowwalker-ccs09.pdf http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#ccs09-torsk http://freehaven.net/anonbib/#wpes09-dht-attack --Roger *********************************************************************** To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to majord...@torproject.org with unsubscribe or-talk in the body. http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/