From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 94 09:54:24 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Question for remailer operators
In-Reply-To: <ab16fc6e0702100415ad@[137.110.24.249]>
Message-ID: <199412161753.JAA21458@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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lcottrell@popmail.ucsd.edu (Lance Cottrell) writes, quoting Hal:

>>I see about 200 messages a day through my remailer, sizes averaging a
>>couple of K.  I had the impression at one point that the VAST majority of
>>this was "cover" traffic that someone is generating just to keep the
>>network busy.  I don't know if this is still the case.  It might be
>>possible to opt out of the cover traffic generator to reduce your load
>>to a politically manageable level.  Maybe people generating cover traffic
>>could estimate how many messages they are generating.

>I have a script generating covering traffic. It creates a message at random
>intervals between 1 and 20 min. The messages are encrypted, and padded with
>cutmarks for all remailers which support that. The messages are sent
>through six hops. The remailers are chosen from all reasonably reliable
>remailers on Raph Levine's list (except for those which have asked to be
>excluded).

So, if the average interval is 10 minutes, that would be 6 messages per
hour or 6*24 = 144 messages a day.  Each message goes through 6 of
probably a dozen or so remailers or about half of them, so that would be
about 70 messages per remailer per day from your script.  My count above
is of messages through both the alumni and portal remailers, so that
would be about 140 from you out of around 200 or about 70% from your
script.  If you have more or less than a dozen remailers to choose from
that would affect this figure.

I really think this script is overkill at the current time.  Each message
has to be decrypted and dispatched, and this makes the remailer pretty
conspicuous.  I think the script could slow the acceptance of remailers.
In any case, I think I will ask you to take the alumni.caltech and
shell.portal remailers off of your list.

Hal

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