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335-middle-only-redux.md

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Filename: 335-middle-only-redux.md
Title: An authority-only design for MiddleOnly
Author: Nick Mathewson
Created: 2021-10-08
Status: Closed
Implemented-In: 0.4.7.2-alpha

Introduction

This proposal describes an alternative design for a MiddleOnly flag. Instead of making changes at the client level, it adds a little increased complexity at the directory authority's voting process. In return for that complexity, this design will work without additional changes required from Tor clients.

For additional motivation and discussion see proposal 334 by Neel Chauhan, and the related discussions on tor-dev.

Protocol changes

Generating votes

When voting for a relay with the MiddleOnly flag, an authority should vote for all flags indicating that a relay is unusable for a particular purpose, and against all flags indicating that the relay is usable for a particular position.

Specifically, these flags SHOULD be set in a vote whenever MiddleOnly is present, and only when the authority is configured to vote on the BadExit flag.

  • BadExit

And these flags SHOULD be cleared in a vote whenever MiddleOnly is present.

  • Exit
  • Guard
  • HSDir
  • V2Dir

Computing a consensus

This proposal will introduce a new consensus method (probably 32). Whenever computing a consensus using that consensus method or later, authorities post-process the set of flags that appear in the consensus after flag voting takes place, by applying the same rule as above.

That is, with this consensus method, the authorities first compute the presence or absence of each flag on each relay as usual. Then, if the MiddleOnly flag is present, the authorities set BadExit, and clear Exit, Guard, HSDir, and V2Dir.

Configuring authorities

We'll need a means for configuring which relays will receive this flag. For now, we'll just reuse the same mechanism as AuthDirReject and AuthDirBadExit: a set of torrc configuration lines listing relays by address. We'll call this AuthDirMiddleOnly.

We'll also add an AuthDirListsMiddleOnly option to turn on or off voting on this option at all.

Notes on safety and migration

Under this design, the MiddleOnly option becomes useful immediately, since authorities that use it will stop voting for certain additional options for MiddleOnly relays without waiting for the other authorities.

We don't need to worry about a single authority setting MiddleOnly unilaterally for all relays, since the MiddleOnly flag will have no special effect until most authorities have upgraded to the new consensus method.