Make relay-search look at exit list data

When people are searching by IP address, they often want to know if a given IP address "was" a Tor relay. If they look up by the IP address they see in their weblogs, but the relay is multihomed, they could miss it.

added component::metrics/website owner::karsten priority::medium resolution::wontfix status::closed type::defect labels

The new ExoneraTor BETA looks at exit lists in addition to consensuses. The BETA version also changes a couple of other things, and I'm waiting for some feedback before replacing the current version with it.

Adding exit lists to the relay search will be much more difficult. The relay search is mostly broken with response times of up to a few minutes. I think we'll have to design a database specifically for searching descriptors that is independent of the Metrics database. Adding this functionality to the Metrics database and having to keep all descriptors that were published ever may not have been the best idea. The two purposes of aggregating data for statistical purposes and making a huge amount of data searchable are just too different. The new database should then support searching for IP addresses in exit lists, similar to how ExoneraTor does that.

Replying to karsten:

I think we'll have to design a database specifically for searching descriptors that is independent of the Metrics database.

Works for me.

The ExoneraTor part is implemented since about a year ago, and there's no progress yet on a specifically designed database for searching relays. Updating ticket summary.

Trac:
Summary: exonerator, and maybe relay-search, should look at exitlist data to Make relay-search look at exit list data

Ponies! We should either shut down the relay-search service, or isolate it from metrics-web and leave it running until it breaks. See related discussion on tor-talk@.

Trac:
Resolution: N/A to wontfix
Status: new to closed

closed