Building circuits through Fast (actually) relays
As a Tor user, I would like to have an option to build my circuits through relays that can deliver a typical modern web page within a few seconds. I do understand that it depends on many factors outside the nominal capacity of relays, and that it may not always be possible.
I run a few relays, and the "Fast" flag caught my attention mainly due to its name. The "Fast" flag may not be the right knob to protect the user experience; this ticket is just to make sure it does not stand in the way.
A relay is only required to provide 100 KB/s of maximum bandwidth to be considered "Fast" and for users to build general-purpose circuits through it. I suspect that 100 KB/s, even with no other traffic competing for that bandwidth, is insufficient for a good browsing experience.
In addition to the threshold being low, it does not seem to be consistently applied. Sorting the list of all relays on blutmagie.de shows that some relays with bandwidth as low as 1 KB/s still have the "Fast" flag set.
I don't have a proposal - I suspect "making Tor faster" is a big and complex challenge. With this ticket, I would like to make sure that 1) the 100 KB/s threshold is not just a magic number but is derived from some concrete (Sybil-related and/or user experience-related) rule that allows it to auto-scale, and 2) it is applied consistently.
Trac:
Username: IgorMitrofanov