From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 94 21:00:51 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Remailer ideas (Was: Re: Latency vs. Reordering)
In-Reply-To: <2e3ff46f.nemesis@nemesis.wimsey.com>
Message-ID: <199408050412.VAA22070@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Re putting remailer aliveness on usenet:

What I think is a better idea was proposed here last year, and I think
someone was doing it for a while.  It is for someone to volunteer to
be the keeper of the remailer aliveness information.  He runs scripts
every day to ping the remailers, keeps lists of which remailers are
currently active, and so on.  This information is collected and put into
a file retrievable by email or finger.  This way you need only check a
single site to find out which remailers are up, and you don't have the
usenet waste of sending stuff all over the world that only a few people
are interested in (yes, I know usenet does this already, but it won't
forever).

Just like people set up web sites that point to interesting resources,
some people will (and perhaps are already) run sites which point to good
remailers.  This is just as useful a service as running a remailer, and
a good deal less controversial.  This seems like a good solution to the
problem of finding running remailers.

Hal