More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/

Article

On the Accuracy of Tor Bandwidth Estimation

Authors:

Aaron JohnsonAuthors Info & Claims

Passive and Active Measurement: 22nd International Conference, PAM 2021, Virtual Event, March 29 – April 1, 2021, Proceedings

Pages 481 - 498

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72582-2_28

Published: 29 March 2021 Publication History

Abstract

The Tor network estimates its relays’ bandwidths using relay self-measurements of client traffic speeds. These estimates largely determine how existing traffic load is balanced across relays, and they are used to evaluate the network’s capacity to handle future traffic load increases. Thus, their accuracy is important to optimize Tor’s performance and strategize for growth. However, their accuracy has never been measured. We investigate the accuracy of Tor’s capacity estimation with an analysis of public network data and an active experiment run over the entire live network. Our results suggest that the bandwidth estimates underestimate the total network capacity by at least 50% and that the errors are larger for high-bandwidth and low-uptime relays. Our work suggests that improving Tor’s bandwidth measurement system could improve the network’s performance and better inform plans to handle future growth.

References

[1]

Research safety board, August 2019. https://research.torproject.org/safetyboard

[2]

Tor directory protocol, version 3, September 2019. https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/dir-spec.txt

[3]

Tor Metrics Portal, August 2019. https://metrics.torproject.org

[4]

Andre, G., Alexandra, D., Samuel, K.: SmarTor: smarter tor with smart contracts: improving resilience of topology distribution in the Tor network. In: Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) (2018)

[5]

Bauer, K., McCoy, D., Grunwald, D., Kohno, T., Sicker, D.: Low-resource routing attacks against Tor. In: Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES) (2007)

[6]

Cangialosi, F., Levin, D., Spring, N.: Ting: measuring and exploiting latencies between all Tor nodes. In: Conference on Internet Measurement (IMC) (2015)

[7]

Darir, H., Sibai, H., Borisov, N., Dullerud, G., Mitra, S.: TightRope: towards optimal load-balancing of paths in anonymous networks. In: Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES) (2018)

[8]

Dingledine, R.: The lifecycle of a new relay. Tor Blog Post, September 2013. https://blog.torproject.org/lifecycle-new-relay

[9]

Dingledine, R., Hopper, N., Kadianakis, G., Mathewson, N.: One fast guard for life (or 9 months). In: Workshop on Hot Topics in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (HotPETs) (2014)

[10]

Dingledine, R., Mathewson, N.: Tor protocol specification, November 2018. https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/tor-spec.txt

[11]

Dingledine, R., Mathewson, N.: Tor path specification, September 2019. https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/path-spec.txt

[12]

Dingledine, R., Mathewson, N., Syverson, P.: Tor: the second-generation onion router. In: USENIX Security Symposium (2004)

[13]

Dinh, T.N., Rochet, F., Pereira, O., Wallach, D.S.: Scaling up anonymous communication with efficient nanopayment channels. Proc. Priv. Enhanc. Technol. (PoPETs) 2020(3), 175-203 (2020)

[14]

Ghosh, M., Richardson, M., Ford, B., Jansen, R.: A TorPath to TorCoin: proof-of-bandwidth altcoins for compensating relays. In: Workshop on Hot Topics in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (HotPETs) (2014)

[15]

Greubel, A., Pohl, S., Kounev, S.: Quantifying measurement quality and load distribution in Tor. In: Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) (2020)

[16]

Jansen, R.: Measuring the accuracy of tor relays’ advertised bandwidths, July 2019. https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2019-July/017535.html

[17]

Jansen, R., Hopper, N., Kim, Y.: Recruiting new tor relays with BRAIDS. In: Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) (2010)

[18]

Jansen, R., Johnson, A., Syverson, P.: LIRA: lightweight incentivized routing for anonymity. In: Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) (2013)

[19]

Jansen, R., Miller, A., Syverson, P., Ford, B.: From onions to shallots: rewarding tor relays with TEARS. In: Workshop on Hot Topics in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (HotPETs) (2014)

[20]

Jansen, R., Tschorsch, F., Johnson, A., Scheuermann, B.: The sniper attack: anonymously deanonymizing and disabling the Tor network. In: Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) (2014)

[21]

Jansen, R., Vaidya, T., Sherr, M.: Point break: a study of bandwidth denial-of-service attacks against Tor. In: USENIX Security Symposium (2019)

[22]

Johnson, A., Jansen, R., Hopper, N., Segal, A., Syverson, P.: PeerFlow: secure load balancing in Tor. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PoPETs) 2017(2), 74-94 (2017)

[23]

Johnson, A., Wacek, C., Jansen, R., Sherr, M., Syverson, P.: Users get routed: traffic correlation on tor by realistic adversaries. In: Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) (2013)

[24]

Juga: How bandwidth scanners monitor the tor network. tor blog post, April 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/how-bandwidth-scanners-monitor-tor-network

[25]

Mani, A., Brown, T.W., Jansen, R., Johnson, A., Sherr, M.: Understanding Tor usage with privacy-preserving measurement. In: Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) (2018)

[26]

Moore, W.B., Wacek, C., Sherr, M.: Exploring the potential benefits of expanded rate limiting in Tor: slow and steady wins the race with tortoise. In: Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) (2011)

[27]

Mozilla: Mozilla research grants 2019H1 (2019). https://mozilla-research.forms.fm/mozilla-research-grants-2019h1/forms/6510. call for Proposals

[28]

“Johnny” Ngan, T.-W., Dingledine, R., Wallach, D.S.: Building incentives into Tor. In: Sion, R. (ed.) FC 2010. LNCS, vol. 6052, pp. 238–256. Springer, Heidelberg (2010).

[29]

Panchenko, A., et al.: Website fingerprinting at Internet scale. In: Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) (2016)

[30]

Perry, M.: TorFlow: Tor network analysis. In: Workshop on Hot Topics in Privacy Enhancing Technologies (HotPETs) (2009)

[31]

Snader, R., Borisov, N.: EigenSpeed: secure peer-to-peer bandwidth evaluation. In: International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS) (2009)

[32]

Mozilla research call: tune up tor for integration and scale, May 2019. https://blog.torproject.org/mozilla-research-call-tune-tor-integration-and-scale

[33]

Thill, F.: Hidden service tracking detection and bandwidth cheating in Tor anonymity network. Master’s thesis, University of Luxembourg (2014)

[34]

Wright M, Adler M, Levine BN, and Shields C The predecessor attack: an analysis of a threat to anonymous communications systems ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. Secur. (TISSEC) 2004 4 7 489-522

Cited By

Gegenhuber GMaier MHolzbauer FMayer WMerzdovnik GWeippl EUllrich J(2023)An extended view on measuring tor AS-level adversariesComputers and Security10.1016/j.cose.2023.103302132:COnline publication date: 1-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cose.2023.103302
Ma XRochet FElahi T(2022)Stopping Silent Sneaks: Defending against Malicious Mixes with Topological EngineeringProceedings of the 38th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference10.1145/3564625.3567996(132-145)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3564625.3567996

Recommendations

Bandwidth estimation: metrics, measurement techniques, and tools

In a packet network, the terms bandwidth and throughput often characterize the amount of data that the network can transfer per unit of time. Bandwidth estimation is of interest to users wishing to optimize end-to-end transport performance, overlay ...
SGX-Tor: A Secure and Practical Tor Anonymity Network With SGX Enclaves

With Tor being a popular anonymity network, many attacks have been proposed to break its anonymity or leak information of a private communication on Tor. However, guaranteeing complete privacy in the face of an adversary on Tor is especially difficult, ...
Traffic shaping and bandwidth allocation algorithms for vbr traffic

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image Guide Proceedings

Passive and Active Measurement: 22nd International Conference, PAM 2021, Virtual Event, March 29 – April 1, 2021, Proceedings

Mar 2021

575 pages

ISBN:978-3-030-72581-5

DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-72582-2

Editors:
Oliver Hohlfeld
Brandenburg University of Technology (BTU), Cottbus, Germany
,
Andra Lutu
Telefonica Research, Barcelona, Spain
,
Dave Levin
Iribe Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.

Publisher

Springer-Verlag

Berlin, Heidelberg

Publication History

Published: 29 March 2021

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

2
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 29 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Gegenhuber GMaier MHolzbauer FMayer WMerzdovnik GWeippl EUllrich J(2023)An extended view on measuring tor AS-level adversariesComputers and Security10.1016/j.cose.2023.103302132:COnline publication date: 1-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cose.2023.103302
Ma XRochet FElahi T(2022)Stopping Silent Sneaks: Defending against Malicious Mixes with Topological EngineeringProceedings of the 38th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference10.1145/3564625.3567996(132-145)Online publication date: 5-Dec-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3564625.3567996

View Options

View options

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten