From: Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>
Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 15:27:03 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Remailer latencies
Message-ID: <eb2d15eafd66ee1e5926116f2e88302f@anon.efga.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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David E. Smith wrote:
>> Incidentally, if somebody offered you colocation space, would you be
>> willing to set up your machine there?
>
>I wouldn't, and I hope not many other remailer operators would
>either.  A lot of the security on my machine comes from having
>physical control over it.

Good point.  Also, using a dialup gives you another layer of physical
privacy.  You could even move the machine around from time to time.
This could even foil the Big Boys if they don't want to reveal how
well they can track things.

(Corollary: Even if PGP is NSA breakable, you can still use it for
drug dealing and bribery.)

>(That includes the ability to rapidly delete things with extreme
>prejudice should the spooks come knocking at the door.) If I'm not
>sleeping in the room next to my machine, I don't have that kind of
>control.

What is on your machine that has to be deleted?  I suppose you'd want
to power cycle it since the private key (or a passphrase) will be
sitting in memory.  Is there anything on the disk that must be
deleted?

More operations questions: according to Raph's chart, your machine has
an "uptime" of 99.64%.  I assume that means Raph's experiments showed
that 36 messages out of 1000 disappeared.  Did I assume correctly?

If so, what accounts for these message losses?  I would expect that if
your machine was down, even for a couple of days, that the incoming
messages would be queued up on other machines and none would be lost.

BTW, my intention is not be critical of your volunteer work running a
remailer, but to develop an understanding of the issues involved.
Even a response like "the machine was down for three days because I
was in Las Vegas partying" is useful because it would suggest that
remailer operators are not adequately compensated for their work.

Monty Cantsin
Editor in Chief
Smile Magazine
http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html
http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html

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