[ad_1]
The Tor Project has published details about a recently introduced system called Congestion Control that promises to eliminate speed limits on the network.
This new system is running on version 0.4.7.7 of the Tor protocol, the latest stable version available since last week.
Congestion control “will result in significant improvements in Tor’s performance, as well as increased utilization of our network capacity,” the project’s maintainers say.
Tor and congestion
Tor (The Onion Router) is a volunteer-run overlay network consisting of thousands of repeaters that serve as bounce points for encrypted user network traffic and exit nodes that are essentially the gateways to the public Internet.
The project’s mission is to hide users’ real location and browsing interests, with the aim of achieving maximum privacy and anonymity for Internet users.
One of the downsides of such a system is slow browsing speed, which is affected by traffic congestion at Tor network nodes and queues at exit relays.
Regulating traffic congestion on the Tor network is a challenge without compromising privacy-preserving mechanisms. However, after nearly two decades of searching for solutions, the project finally introduced congestion control.
The new system implements three algorithms, namely Tor-Westwood, Tor-Vegas, and Tor-NOLA, which together help reduce memory consumption and stabilize and minimize queuing delay and latency:
- Tor Westwood – Minimizes packet loss on large pipes
- Tor-Vegas: estimate the length of the queue and introduce balance elements
- Tor-NOLA: Works as a bandwidth delay estimator.
Results and implementation
The Tor project has run simulations to compare versions 0.4.6 and 0.4.7, and the results are impressive across the board with smoother and improved browsing without speed limitations or bottlenecks, without adding any latency burden. from end to end.
However, for the entire community to benefit from the improvements, outbound relay operators will need to upgrade to 0.4.7 of the Tor protocol.
Internal Tor node operators do not need to upgrade, but will need to set bandwidth limits. This is because traffic patterns will change and congestion control is expected to use the relays to their full capacity.
The more customers upgrade to version 0.4.7 (or later), the more noticeable the network performance gain will be for everyone, but the first results are already noticeable.
“Because our network is about 25% utilized, we expect performance to be very high for early adopters using 0.4.7 on fast circuits with fast 0.4.7 outputs to the point where most customers are upgraded. At that point, a new balance will be reached in terms of performance and network utilization.”
“For this reason, we are delaying the release of a stable Tor Browser with congestion control until enough Exits have been updated to make the experience more consistent. We expect this to happen before May 31” – the Tor Project
For the next major stable release, version 0.4.8, the Tor project plans to implement a traffic splitting mechanism that should further improve network speeds.
[ad_2]
