[tahoe-dev] switching from introducers to gossip?

[bertagaz at ptitcanardnoir.org]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 02:45:21PM +0100, Michael Rogers wrote:
> 
> I think it might be possible to handle this from the client side by
> building circuits with fewer than three hops.

If such an option is chosen, might be relevant to discuss this with the
torproject people, if the intend is to use the public Tor network to relay
such traffic. Better ask before if it is really intended for that use, or
the side effects it could have for other users.

> Usually each circuit has three hops, but if Alice and Bob don't need
> to be anonymous or unlinkable they can use one-hop circuits. The final
> connection would have two hops: Alice <-> rendezvous point <-> Bob.
>
> The client is responsible for choosing the length of the circuit in
> Tor, so it should be possible to do this through a client library like
> Silvertunnel without modifying the protocol or the relays.

Moxie wrote a tool once to reduce the number of hops of one's Tor
circuits to only one (the exit node), but it is unmaintained and does not
work anymore.
http://www.thoughtcrime.org/software/tortunnel/
It is supposed to use exit nodes directly, and as such is probably not so
interesting for this discussion about hidden services, but worth to dig in
maybe.

Anyway Tor software and protocols are big pieces, and not the kind so easy
to play with. :)

bert.