Tor directory protocol, version 3 0. Scope and preliminaries This directory protocol is used by Tor version 0.2.0.x-alpha and later. See dir-spec-v1.txt for information on the protocol used up to the 0.1.0.x series, and dir-spec-v2.txt for information on the protocol used by the 0.1.1.x and 0.1.2.x series. Caches and authorities must still support older versions of the directory protocols, until the versions of Tor that require them are finally out of commission. See Section XXXX on backward compatibility. This document merges and supersedes the following proposals: 101 Voting on the Tor Directory System 103 Splitting identity key from regularly used signing key 104 Long and Short Router Descriptors AS OF 14 JUNE 2007, THIS SPECIFICATION HAS NOT YET BEEN COMPLETELY IMPLEMENTED, OR COMPLETELY COMPLETED. XXX when to download certificates. XXX timeline XXX fill in XXXXs 0.1. History The earliest versions of Onion Routing shipped with a list of known routers and their keys. When the set of routers changed, users needed to fetch a new list. The Version 1 Directory protocol -------------------------------- Early versions of Tor (0.0.2) introduced "Directory authorities": servers that served signed "directory" documents containing a list of signed "router descriptors", along with short summary of the status of each router. Thus, clients could get up-to-date information on the state of the network automatically, and be certain that the list they were getting was attested by a trusted directory authority. Later versions (0.0.8) added directory caches, which download directories from the authorities and serve them to clients. Non-caches fetch from the caches in preference to fetching from the authorities, thus distributing bandwidth requirements. Also added during the version 1 directory protocol were "router status" documents: short documents that listed only the up/down status of the routers on the network, rather than a complete list of all the descriptors. Clients and caches would fetch these documents far more frequently than they would fetch full directories. The Version 2 Directory Protocol -------------------------------- During the Tor 0.1.1.x series, Tor revised its handling of directory documents in order to address two major problems: * Directories had grown quite large (over 1MB), and most directory downloads consisted mainly of router descriptors that clients already had. * Every directory authority was a trust bottleneck: if a single directory authority lied, it could make clients believe for a time an arbitrarily distorted view of the Tor network. (Clients trusted the most recent signed document they downloaded.) Thus, adding more authorities would make the system less secure, not more. To address these, we extended the directory protocol so that authorities now published signed "network status" documents. Each network status listed, for every router in the network: a hash of its identity key, a hash of its most recent descriptor, and a summary of what the authority believed about its status. Clients would download the authorities' network status documents in turn, and believe statements about routers iff they were attested to by more than half of the authorities. Instead of downloading all router descriptors at once, clients downloaded only the descriptors that they did not have. Descriptors were indexed by their digests, in order to prevent malicious caches from giving different versions of a router descriptor to different clients. Routers began working harder to upload new descriptors only when their contents were substantially changed. 0.2. Goals of the version 3 protocol Version 3 of the Tor directory protocol tries to solve the following issues: * A great deal of bandwidth used to transmit router descriptors was used by two fields that are not actually used by Tor routers (namely read-history and write-history). We save about 60% by moving them into a separate document that most clients do not fetch or use. * It was possible under certain perverse circumstances for clients to download an unusual set of network status documents, thus partitioning themselves from clients who have a more recent and/or typical set of documents. Even under the best of circumstances, clients were sensitive to the ages of the network status documents they downloaded. Therefore, instead of having the clients correlate multiple network status documents, we have the authorities collectively vote on a single consensus network status document. * The most sensitive data in the entire network (the identity keys of the directory authorities) needed to be stored unencrypted so that the authorities can sign network-status documents on the fly. Now, the authorities' identity keys are stored offline, and used to certify medium-term signing keys that can be rotated. 0.3. Some Remaining questions Things we could solve on a v3 timeframe: The SHA-1 hash is showing its age. We should do something about our dependency on it. We could probably future-proof ourselves here in this revision, at least so far as documents from the authorities are concerned. Too many things about the authorities are hardcoded by IP. Perhaps we should start accepting longer identity keys for routers too. Things to solve eventually: Requiring every client to know about every router won't scale forever. Requiring every directory cache to know every router won't scale forever. 1. Outline There is a small set (say, around 5-10) of semi-trusted directory authorities. A default list of authorities is shipped with the Tor software. Users can change this list, but are encouraged not to do so, in order to avoid partitioning attacks. Every authority has a very-secret, long-term "Authority Identity Key". This is stored encrypted and/or offline, and is used to sign "key certificate" documents. Every key certificate contains a medium-term (3-12 months) "authority signing key", that is used by the authority to sign other directory information. (Note that the authority identity key is distinct from the router identity key that the authority uses in its role as an ordinary router.) Routers periodically upload signed "routers descriptors" to the directory authorities describing their keys, capabilities, and other information. Routers may also upload signed "extra info documents" containing information that is not required for the Tor protocol. Directory authorities serve router descriptors indexed by router identity, or by hash of the descriptor. Routers may act as directory caches to reduce load on the directory authorities. They announce this in their descriptors. Periodically, each directory authority generates a view of the current descriptors and status for known routers. They send a signed summary of this view (a "status vote") to the other authorities. The authorities compute the result of this vote, and sign a "consensus status" document containing the result of the vote. Directory caches download, cache, and re-serve consensus documents. Clients, directory caches, and directory authorities all use consensus documents to find out when their list of routers is out-of-date. (Directory authorities also use vote statuses.) If it is, they download any missing router descriptors. Clients download missing descriptors from caches; caches and authorities download from authorities. Descriptors are downloaded by the hash of the descriptor, not by the server's identity key: this prevents servers from attacking clients by giving them descriptors nobody else uses. All directory information is uploaded and downloaded with HTTP. [Authorities also generate and caches also cache documents produced and used by earlier versions of this protocol; see section XXX for notes.] 1.1. What's different from version 2? Clients used to download multiple network status documents, corresponding roughly to "status votes" above. They would compute the result of the vote on the client side. Authorities used to sign documents using the same private keys they used for their roles as routers. This forced them to keep these extremely sensitive keys in memory unencrypted. All of the information in extra-info documents used to be kept in the main descriptors. 1.2. Document meta-format Router descriptors, directories, and running-routers documents all obey the following lightweight extensible information format. The highest level object is a Document, which consists of one or more Items. Every Item begins with a KeywordLine, followed by zero or more Objects. A KeywordLine begins with a Keyword, optionally followed by whitespace and more non-newline characters, and ends with a newline. A Keyword is a sequence of one or more characters in the set [A-Za-z0-9-]. An Object is a block of encoded data in pseudo-Open-PGP-style armor. (cf. RFC 2440) More formally: NL = The ascii LF character (hex value 0x0a). Document ::= (Item | NL)+ Item ::= KeywordLine Object* KeywordLine ::= Keyword NL | Keyword WS ArgumentChar+ NL Keyword = KeywordChar+ KeywordChar ::= 'A' ... 'Z' | 'a' ... 'z' | '0' ... '9' | '-' ArgumentChar ::= any printing ASCII character except NL. WS = (SP | TAB)+ Object ::= BeginLine Base-64-encoded-data EndLine BeginLine ::= "-----BEGIN " Keyword "-----" NL EndLine ::= "-----END " Keyword "-----" NL The BeginLine and EndLine of an Object must use the same keyword. When interpreting a Document, software MUST ignore any KeywordLine that starts with a keyword it doesn't recognize; future implementations MUST NOT require current clients to understand any KeywordLine not currently described. The "opt" keyword was used until Tor 0.1.2.5-alpha for non-critical future extensions. All implementations MUST ignore any item of the form "opt keyword ....." when they would not recognize "keyword ....."; and MUST treat "opt keyword ....." as synonymous with "keyword ......" when keyword is recognized. Implementations before 0.1.2.5-alpha rejected any document with a KeywordLine that started with a keyword that they didn't recognize. When generating documents that need to be read by older versions of Tor, implementations MUST prefix items not recognized by older versions of Tor with an "opt" until those versions of Tor are obsolete. [Note that key certificates, status vote documents, extra info documents, and status consensus documents will never be read by older versions of Tor.] Other implementations that want to extend Tor's directory format MAY introduce their own items. The keywords for extension items SHOULD start with the characters "x-" or "X-", to guarantee that they will not conflict with keywords used by future versions of Tor. In our document descriptions below, we tag Items with a multiplicity in brackets. Possible tags are: "At start, exactly once": These items MUST occur in every instance of the document type, and MUST appear exactly once, and MUST be the first item in their documents. "Exactly once": These items MUST occur exactly one time in every instance of the document type. "At end, exactly once": These items MUST occur in every instance of the document type, and MUST appear exactly once, and MUST be the last item in their documents. "At most once": These items MAY occur zero or one times in any instance of the document type, but MUST NOT occur more than once. "Any number": These items MAY occur zero, one, or more times in any instance of the document type. "Once or more": These items MUST occur at least once in any instance of the document type, and MAY occur more. 1.3. Signing documents Every signable document below is signed in a similar manner, using a given "Initial Item", a final "Signature Item", a digest algorithm, and a signing key. The Initial Item must be the first item in the document. The Signature Item has the following format: [arguments] NL SIGNATURE NL The "SIGNATURE" Object contains a signature (using the signing key) of the PKCS1-padded digest of the entire document, taken from the beginning of the Initial item, through the newline after the Signature Item's keyword and its arguments. Unless otherwise, the digest algorithm is SHA-1. All documents are invalid unless signed with the correct signing key. The "Digest" of a document, unless stated otherwise, is its digest *as signed by this signature scheme*. 1.4. Voting timeline Every consensus document has a "valid-after" (VA) time, a "fresh-until" (FU) time and a "valid-until" (VU) time. VA MUST precede FU, which MUST in turn precede VU. Times are chosen so that every consensus will be "fresh" until the next consensus becomes valid, and "valid" for a while after. At least 3 consensuses should be valid at any given time. The timeline for a given consensus is as follows: VA-DistSeconds-VoteSeconds: The authorities exchange votes. VA-DistSeconds-VoteSeconds/2: The authorities try to download any votes they don't have. VA-DistSeconds: The authorities calculate the consensus and exchange signatures. VA-DistSeconds/2: The authorities try to download any signatures they don't have. VA: All authorities have a multiply signed consensus. VA ... FU: Caches download the consensus. (Note that since caches have no way of telling what VA and FU are until they have downloaded the consensus, they assume that the present consensus's VA is equal to the previous one's FU, and that its FU is one interval after that.) FU: The consensus is no longer the freshest consensus. FU ... (the current consensus's VU): Clients download the consensus. (See note above: clients guess that the next consensus's FU will be two intervals after the current VA.) VU: The consensus is no longer valid. VoteSeconds and DistSeconds MUST each be at least 20 seconds; FU-VA and VU-FU MUST each be at least 5 minutes. 2. Router operation and formats ORs SHOULD generate a new router descriptor and a new extra-info document whenever any of the following events have occurred: - A period of time (18 hrs by default) has passed since the last time a descriptor was generated. - A descriptor field other than bandwidth or uptime has changed. - Bandwidth has changed by a factor of 2 from the last time a descriptor was generated, and at least a given interval of time (20 mins by default) has passed since then. - Its uptime has been reset (by restarting). [XXX this list is incomplete; see router_differences_are_cosmetic() in routerlist.c for others] ORs SHOULD NOT publish a new router descriptor or extra-info document if none of the above events have occurred and not much time has passed (12 hours by default). After generating a descriptor, ORs upload them to every directory authority they know, by posting them (in order) to the URL http:///tor/ 2.1. Router descriptor format Router descriptors consist of the following items. For backward compatibility, there should be an extra NL at the end of each router descriptor. In lines that take multiple arguments, extra arguments SHOULD be accepted and ignored. Many of the nonterminals below are defined in section 2.3. "router" nickname address ORPort SOCKSPort DirPort NL [At start, exactly once.] Indicates the beginning of a router descriptor. "nickname" must be a valid router nickname as specified in 2.3. "address" must be an IPv4 address in dotted-quad format. The last three numbers indicate the TCP ports at which this OR exposes functionality. ORPort is a port at which this OR accepts TLS connections for the main OR protocol; SOCKSPort is deprecated and should always be 0; and DirPort is the port at which this OR accepts directory-related HTTP connections. If any port is not supported, the value 0 is given instead of a port number. (At least one of DirPort and ORPort SHOULD be set; authorities MAY reject any descriptor with both DirPort and ORPort of 0.) "bandwidth" bandwidth-avg bandwidth-burst bandwidth-observed NL [Exactly once] Estimated bandwidth for this router, in bytes per second. The "average" bandwidth is the volume per second that the OR is willing to sustain over long periods; the "burst" bandwidth is the volume that the OR is willing to sustain in very short intervals. The "observed" value is an estimate of the capacity this server can handle. The server remembers the max bandwidth sustained output over any ten second period in the past day, and another sustained input. The "observed" value is the lesser of these two numbers. "platform" string NL [At most once] A human-readable string describing the system on which this OR is running. This MAY include the operating system, and SHOULD include the name and version of the software implementing the Tor protocol. "published" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL [Exactly once] The time, in GMT, when this descriptor (and its corresponding extra-info document if any) was generated. "fingerprint" fingerprint NL [At most once] A fingerprint (a HASH_LEN-byte of asn1 encoded public key, encoded in hex, with a single space after every 4 characters) for this router's identity key. A descriptor is considered invalid (and MUST be rejected) if the fingerprint line does not match the public key. [We didn't start parsing this line until Tor 0.1.0.6-rc; it should be marked with "opt" until earlier versions of Tor are obsolete.] "hibernating" bool NL [At most once] If the value is 1, then the Tor server was hibernating when the descriptor was published, and shouldn't be used to build circuits. [We didn't start parsing this line until Tor 0.1.0.6-rc; it should be marked with "opt" until earlier versions of Tor are obsolete.] "uptime" number NL [At most once] The number of seconds that this OR process has been running. "onion-key" NL a public key in PEM format [Exactly once] This key is used to encrypt EXTEND cells for this OR. The key MUST be accepted for at least 1 week after any new key is published in a subsequent descriptor. It MUST be 1024 bits. "signing-key" NL a public key in PEM format [Exactly once] The OR's long-term identity key. It MUST be 1024 bits. "accept" exitpattern NL "reject" exitpattern NL [Any number] These lines describe an "exit policy": the rules that an OR follows when deciding whether to allow a new stream to a given address. The 'exitpattern' syntax is described below. There MUST be at least one such entry. The rules are considered in order; if no rule matches, the address will be accepted. For clarity, the last such entry SHOULD be accept *:* or reject *:*. "router-signature" NL Signature NL [At end, exactly once] The "SIGNATURE" object contains a signature of the PKCS1-padded hash of the entire router descriptor, taken from the beginning of the "router" line, through the newline after the "router-signature" line. The router descriptor is invalid unless the signature is performed with the router's identity key. "contact" info NL [At most once] Describes a way to contact the server's administrator, preferably including an email address and a PGP key fingerprint. "family" names NL [At most once] 'Names' is a space-separated list of server nicknames or hexdigests. If two ORs list one another in their "family" entries, then OPs should treat them as a single OR for the purpose of path selection. For example, if node A's descriptor contains "family B", and node B's descriptor contains "family A", then node A and node B should never be used on the same circuit. "read-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM... NL [At most once] "write-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM... NL [At most once] Declare how much bandwidth the OR has used recently. Usage is divided into intervals of NSEC seconds. The YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS field defines the end of the most recent interval. The numbers are the number of bytes used in the most recent intervals, ordered from oldest to newest. [We didn't start parsing these lines until Tor 0.1.0.6-rc; they should be marked with "opt" until earlier versions of Tor are obsolete.] [See also migration notes in section 2.2.1.] "eventdns" bool NL [At most once] Declare whether this version of Tor is using the newer enhanced dns logic. Versions of Tor with this field set to false SHOULD NOT be used for reverse hostname lookups. [All versions of Tor before 0.1.2.2-alpha should be assumed to have this option set to 0 if it is not present. All Tor versions at 0.1.2.2-alpha or later should be assumed to have this option set to 1 if it is not present. Until 0.1.2.1-alpha-dev, this option was not generated, even when the new DNS code was in use. Versions of Tor before 0.1.2.1-alpha-dev did not parse this option, so it should be marked "opt". The dnsworker logic has been removed, so this option should not be used by new server code. However, it can still be used, and should still be recognized by new code until Tor 0.1.2.x is obsolete.] "caches-extra-info" NL [At most once.] Present only if this router is a directory cache that provides extra-info documents. [Versions before 0.2.0.1-alpha don't recognize this, and versions before 0.1.2.5-alpha will reject descriptors containing it unless it is prefixed with "opt"; it should be so prefixed until these versions are obsolete.] "extra-info-digest" digest NL [At most once] "Digest" is a hex-encoded digest (using upper-case characters) of the router's extra-info document, as signed in the router's extra-info (that is, not including the signature). (If this field is absent, the router is not uploading a corresponding extra-info document.) [Versions before 0.2.0.1-alpha don't recognize this, and versions before 0.1.2.5-alpha will reject descriptors containing it unless it is prefixed with "opt"; it should be so prefixed until these versions are obsolete.] "hidden-service-dir" *(SP VersionNum) NL [At most once.] Present only if this router stores and serves hidden service descriptors. If any VersionNum(s) are specified, this router supports those descriptor versions. If none are specified, it defaults to version 2 descriptors. [Versions of Tor before 0.1.2.5-alpha rejected router descriptors with unrecognized items; the protocols line should be preceded with an "opt" until these Tors are obsolete.] "protocols" SP "Link" SP LINK-VERSION-LIST SP "Circuit" SP CIRCUIT-VERSION-LIST NL [At most once.] Both lists are space-separated sequences of numbers, to indicate which protocols the server supports. As of 30 Mar 2008, specified protocols are "Link 1 2 Circuit 1". See section 4.1 of tor-spec.txt for more information about link protocol versions. [Versions of Tor before 0.1.2.5-alpha rejected router descriptors with unrecognized items; the protocols line should be preceded with an "opt" until these Tors are obsolete.] "allow-single-hop-exits" [At most one.] Present only if the router allows single-hop circuits to make exit connections. Most Tor servers do not support this: this is included for specialized controllers designed to support perspective access and such. 2.2. Extra-info documents Extra-info documents consist of the following items: "extra-info" Nickname Fingerprint NL [At start, exactly once.] Identifies what router this is an extra info descriptor for. Fingerprint is encoded in hex (using upper-case letters), with no spaces. "published" [Exactly once.] The time, in GMT, when this document (and its corresponding router descriptor if any) was generated. It MUST match the published time in the corresponding router descriptor. "read-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM... NL [At most once.] "write-history" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (NSEC s) NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM,NUM... NL [At most once.] As documented in 2.1 above. See migration notes in section 2.2.1. "geoip-start" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL "geoip-client-origins" CC=N,CC=N,... NL Only generated by bridge routers (see blocking.pdf), and only when they have been configured with a geoip database. Non-bridges SHOULD NOT generate these fields. Contains a list of mappings from two-letter country codes (CC) to the number of clients that have connected to that bridge from that country (approximate, and rounded up to the nearest multiple of 8 in order to hamper traffic analysis). A country is included only if it has at least one address. The time in "geoip-start" is the time at which we began collecting geoip statistics. "router-signature" NL Signature NL [At end, exactly once.] A document signature as documented in section 1.3, using the initial item "extra-info" and the final item "router-signature", signed with the router's identity key. 2.2.1. Moving history fields to extra-info documents. Tools that want to use the read-history and write-history values SHOULD download extra-info documents as well as router descriptors. Such tools SHOULD accept history values from both sources; if they appear in both documents, the values in the extra-info documents are authoritative. New versions of Tor no longer generate router descriptors containing read-history or write-history. Tools should continue to accept read-history and write-history values in router descriptors produced by older versions of Tor until all Tor versions earlier than 0.2.0.x are obsolete. 2.3. Nonterminals in router descriptors nickname ::= between 1 and 19 alphanumeric characters ([A-Za-z0-9]), case-insensitive. hexdigest ::= a '$', followed by 40 hexadecimal characters ([A-Fa-f0-9]). [Represents a server by the digest of its identity key.] exitpattern ::= addrspec ":" portspec portspec ::= "*" | port | port "-" port port ::= an integer between 1 and 65535, inclusive. [Some implementations incorrectly generate ports with value 0. Implementations SHOULD accept this, and SHOULD NOT generate it. Connections to port 0 are never permitted.] addrspec ::= "*" | ip4spec | ip6spec ipv4spec ::= ip4 | ip4 "/" num_ip4_bits | ip4 "/" ip4mask ip4 ::= an IPv4 address in dotted-quad format ip4mask ::= an IPv4 mask in dotted-quad format num_ip4_bits ::= an integer between 0 and 32 ip6spec ::= ip6 | ip6 "/" num_ip6_bits ip6 ::= an IPv6 address, surrounded by square brackets. num_ip6_bits ::= an integer between 0 and 128 bool ::= "0" | "1" 3. Formats produced by directory authorities. Every authority has two keys used in this protocol: a signing key, and an authority identity key. (Authorities also have a router identity key used in their role as a router and by earlier versions of the directory protocol.) The identity key is used from time to time to sign new key certificates using new signing keys; it is very sensitive. The signing key is used to sign key certificates and status documents. There are three kinds of documents generated by directory authorities: Key certificates Status votes Status consensuses Each is discussed below. 3.1. Key certificates Key certificates consist of the following items: "dir-key-certificate-version" version NL [At start, exactly once.] Determines the version of the key certificate. MUST be "3" for the protocol described in this document. Implementations MUST reject formats they don't understand. "dir-address" IPPort NL [At most once] An IP:Port for this authority's directory port. "fingerprint" fingerprint NL [Exactly once.] Hexadecimal encoding without spaces based on the authority's identity key. "dir-identity-key" NL a public key in PEM format [Exactly once.] The long-term authority identity key for this authority. This key SHOULD be at least 2048 bits long; it MUST NOT be shorter than 1024 bits. "dir-key-published" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL [Exactly once.] The time (in GMT) when this document and corresponding key were last generated. "dir-key-expires" YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS NL [Exactly once.] A time (in GMT) after which this key is no longer valid. "dir-signing-key" NL a key in PEM format [Exactly once.] The directory server's public signing key. This key MUST be at least 1024 bits, and MAY be longer. "dir-key-crosscert" NL CrossSignature NL [At most once.] NOTE: Authorities MUST include this field in all newly generated certificates. A future version of this specification will make the field required. CrossSignature is a signature, made using the certificate's signing key, of the digest of the PKCS1-padded hash of the certificate's identity key. For backward compatibility with broken versions of the parser, we wrap the base64-encoded signature in -----BEGIN ID SIGNATURE---- and -----END ID SIGNATURE----- tags. Implementations MUST allow the "ID " portion to be omitted, however. When encountering a certificate with a dir-key-crosscert entry, implementations MUST verify that the signature is a correct signature of the hash of the identity key using the signing key. "dir-key-certification" NL Signature NL [At end, exactly once.] A document signature as documented in section 1.3, using the initial item "dir-key-certificate-version" and the final item "dir-key-certification", signed with the authority identity key. Authorities MUST generate a new signing key and corresponding certificate before the key expires. 3.2. Vote and consensus status documents Votes and consensuses are more strictly formatted then other documents in this specification, since different authorities must be able to generate exactly the same consensus given the same set of votes. The procedure for deciding when to generate vote and consensus status documents are described in section XXX below. Status documents contain a preamble, an authority section, a list of router status entries, and one more footers signature, in that order. Unlike other formats described above, a SP in these documents must be a single space character (hex 20). Some items appear only in votes, and some items appear only in consensuses. Unless specified, items occur in both. The preamble contains the following items. They MUST occur in the order given here: "network-status-version" SP version NL. [At start, exactly once.] A document format version. For this specification, the version is "3". "vote-status" SP type NL [Exactly once.] The status MUST be "vote" or "consensus", depending on the type of the document. "consensus-methods" SP IntegerList NL [Exactly once for votes; does not occur in consensuses.] A space-separated list of supported methods for generating consensuses from votes. See section 3.4.1 for details. Method "1" MUST be included. "consensus-method" SP Integer NL [Exactly once for consensuses; does not occur in votes.] See section 3.4.1 for details. (Only included when the vote is generated with consensus-method 2 or later.) "published" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL [Exactly once for votes; does not occur in consensuses.] The publication time for this status document (if a vote). "valid-after" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL [Exactly once.] The start of the Interval for this vote. Before this time, the consensus document produced from this vote should not be used. See 1.4 for voting timeline information. "fresh-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL [Exactly once.] The time at which the next consensus should be produced; before this time, there is no point in downloading another consensus, since there won't be a new one. See 1.4 for voting timeline information. "valid-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL [Exactly once.] The end of the Interval for this vote. After this time, the consensus produced by this vote should not be used. See 1.4 for voting timeline information. "voting-delay" SP VoteSeconds SP DistSeconds NL [Exactly once.] VoteSeconds is the number of seconds that we will allow to collect votes from all authorities; DistSeconds is the number of seconds we'll allow to collect signatures from all authorities. See 1.4 for voting timeline information. "client-versions" SP VersionList NL [At most once.] A comma-separated list of recommended client versions, in ascending order. If absent, no opinion is held about client versions. "server-versions" SP VersionList NL [At most once.] A comma-separated list of recommended server versions, in ascending order. If absent, no opinion is held about server versions. "known-flags" SP FlagList NL [Exactly once.] A space-separated list of all of the flags that this document might contain. A flag is "known" either because the authority knows about them and might set them (if in a vote), or because enough votes were counted for the consensus for an authoritative opinion to have been formed about their status. The authority section of a vote contains the following items, followed in turn by the authority's current key certificate: "dir-source" SP nickname SP identity SP address SP IP SP dirport SP orport NL [Exactly once, at start] Describes this authority. The nickname is a convenient identifier for the authority. The identity is an uppercase hex fingerprint of the authority's current (v3 authority) identity key. The address is the server's hostname. The IP is the server's current IP address, and dirport is its current directory port. XXXXorport "contact" SP string NL [At most once.] An arbitrary string describing how to contact the directory server's administrator. Administrators should include at least an email address and a PGP fingerprint. "legacy-key" SP FINGERPRINT NL [At most once] Lists a fingerprint for an obsolete _identity_ key still used by this authority to keep older clients working. This option is used to keep key around for a little while in case the authorities need to migrate many identity keys at once. (Generally, this would only happen because of a security vulnerability that affected multiple authorities, like the Debian OpenSSL RNG bug of May 2008.) The authority section of a consensus contains groups the following items, in the order given, with one group for each authority that contributed to the consensus, with groups sorted by authority identity digest: "dir-source" SP nickname SP identity SP address SP IP SP dirport SP orport NL [Exactly once, at start] As in the authority section of a vote. "contact" SP string NL [At most once.] As in the authority section of a vote. "vote-digest" SP digest NL [Exactly once.] A digest of the vote from the authority that contributed to this consensus, as signed (that is, not including the signature). (Hex, upper-case.) Each router status entry contains the following items. Router status entries are sorted in ascending order by identity digest. "r" SP nickname SP identity SP digest SP publication SP IP SP ORPort SP DirPort NL [At start, exactly once.] "Nickname" is the OR's nickname. "Identity" is a hash of its identity key, encoded in base64, with trailing equals sign(s) removed. "Digest" is a hash of its most recent descriptor as signed (that is, not including the signature), encoded in base64. "Publication" is the publication time of its most recent descriptor, in the form YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, in GMT. "IP" is its current IP address; ORPort is its current OR port, "DirPort" is it's current directory port, or "0" for "none". "s" SP Flags NL [At most once.] A series of space-separated status flags, in alphabetical order. Currently documented flags are: "Authority" if the router is a directory authority. "BadExit" if the router is believed to be useless as an exit node (because its ISP censors it, because it is behind a restrictive proxy, or for some similar reason). "BadDirectory" if the router is believed to be useless as a directory cache (because its directory port isn't working, its bandwidth is always throttled, or for some similar reason). "Exit" if the router is more useful for building general-purpose exit circuits than for relay circuits. The path building algorithm uses this flag; see path-spec.txt. "Fast" if the router is suitable for high-bandwidth circuits. "Guard" if the router is suitable for use as an entry guard. "HSDir" if the router is considered a v2 hidden service directory. "Named" if the router's identity-nickname mapping is canonical, and this authority binds names. "Stable" if the router is suitable for long-lived circuits. "Running" if the router is currently usable. "Unnamed" if another router has bound the name used by this router, and this authority binds names. "Valid" if the router has been 'validated'. "V2Dir" if the router implements the v2 directory protocol. "V3Dir" if the router implements this protocol. "v" SP version NL [At most once.] The version of the Tor protocol that this server is running. If the value begins with "Tor" SP, the rest of the string is a Tor version number, and the protocol is "The Tor protocol as supported by the given version of Tor." Otherwise, if the value begins with some other string, Tor has upgraded to a more sophisticated protocol versioning system, and the protocol is "a version of the Tor protocol more recent than any we recognize." Directory authorities SHOULD omit version strings they receive from descriptors if they would cause "v" lines to be over 128 characters long. "w" SP "Bandwidth=" INT NL [At most once.] An estimate of the bandwidth of this server, in an arbitrary unit (currently kilobytes per second). Used to weight router selection. Other weighting keywords may be added later. Clients MUST ignore keywords they do not recognize. "p" SP ("accept" / "reject") SP PortList NL [At most once.] PortList = PortOrRange PortList = PortList "," PortOrRange PortOrRange = INT "-" INT / INT A list of those ports that this router supports (if 'accept') or does not support (if 'reject') for exit to "most addresses". The signature section contains the following item, which appears Exactly Once for a vote, and At Least Once for a consensus. "directory-signature" SP identity SP signing-key-digest NL Signature This is a signature of the status document, with the initial item "network-status-version", and the signature item "directory-signature", using the signing key. (In this case, we take the hash through the _space_ after directory-signature, not the newline: this ensures that all authorities sign the same thing.) "identity" is the hex-encoded digest of the authority identity key of the signing authority, and "signing-key-digest" is the hex-encoded digest of the current authority signing key of the signing authority. 3.3. Deciding how to vote. (This section describes how directory authorities choose which status flags to apply to routers, as of Tor 0.2.0.0-alpha-dev. Later directory authorities MAY do things differently, so long as clients keep working well. Clients MUST NOT depend on the exact behaviors in this section.) In the below definitions, a router is considered "active" if it is running, valid, and not hibernating. "Valid" -- a router is 'Valid' if it is running a version of Tor not known to be broken, and the directory authority has not blacklisted it as suspicious. "Named" -- Directory authority administrators may decide to support name binding. If they do, then they must maintain a file of nickname-to-identity-key mappings, and try to keep this file consistent with other directory authorities. If they don't, they act as clients, and report bindings made by other directory authorities (name X is bound to identity Y if at least one binding directory lists it, and no directory binds X to some other Y'.) A router is called 'Named' if the router believes the given name should be bound to the given key. Two strategies exist on the current network for deciding on values for the Named flag. In the original version, server operators were asked to send nickname-identity pairs to a mailing list of Naming directory authorities operators. The operators were then supposed to add the pairs to their mapping files; in practice, they didn't get to this often. Newer Naming authorities run a script that registers routers in their mapping files once the routers have been online at least two weeks, no other router has that nickname, and no other router has wanted the nickname for a month. If a router has not been online for six months, the router is removed. "Unnamed" -- Directory authorities that support naming should vote for a router to be 'Unnamed' if its given nickname is mapped to a different identity. "Running" -- A router is 'Running' if the authority managed to connect to it successfully within the last 30 minutes. "Stable" -- A router is 'Stable' if it is active, and either its Weighted MTBF is at least the median for known active routers or its Weighted MTBF corresponds to at least 7 days. Routers are never called Stable if they are running a version of Tor known to drop circuits stupidly. (0.1.1.10-alpha through 0.1.1.16-rc are stupid this way.) To calculate weighted MTBF, compute the weighted mean of the lengths of all intervals when the router was observed to be up, weighting intervals by $\alpha^n$, where $n$ is the amount of time that has passed since the interval ended, and $\alpha$ is chosen so that measurements over approximately one month old no longer influence the weighted MTBF much. [XXXX what happens when we have less than 4 days of MTBF info.] "Exit" -- A router is called an 'Exit' iff it allows exits to at least two of the ports 80, 443, and 6667 and allows exits to at least one /8 address space. "Fast" -- A router is 'Fast' if it is active, and its bandwidth is either in the top 7/8ths for known active routers or at least 100KB/s. "Guard" -- A router is a possible 'Guard' if its Weighted Fractional Uptime is at least the median for "familiar" active routers, and if its bandwidth is at least median or at least 250KB/s. If the total bandwidth of active non-BadExit Exit servers is less than one third of the total bandwidth of all active servers, no Exit is listed as a Guard. To calculate weighted fractional uptime, compute the fraction of time that the router is up in any given day, weighting so that downtime and uptime in the past counts less. A node is 'familiar' if 1/8 of all active nodes have appeared more recently than it, OR it has been around for a few weeks. "Authority" -- A router is called an 'Authority' if the authority generating the network-status document believes it is an authority. "V2Dir" -- A router supports the v2 directory protocol if it has an open directory port, and it is running a version of the directory protocol that supports the functionality clients need. (Currently, this is 0.1.1.9-alpha or later.) "V3Dir" -- A router supports the v3 directory protocol if it has an open directory port, and it is running a version of the directory protocol that supports the functionality clients need. (Currently, this is 0.2.0.?????-alpha or later.) "HSDir" -- A router is a v2 hidden service directory if it stores and serves v2 hidden service descriptors and the authority managed to connect to it successfully within the last 24 hours. Directory server administrators may label some servers or IPs as blacklisted, and elect not to include them in their network-status lists. Authorities SHOULD 'disable' any servers in excess of 3 on any single IP. When there are more than 3 to choose from, authorities should first prefer authorities to non-authorities, then prefer Running to non-Running, and then prefer high-bandwidth to low-bandwidth. To 'disable' a server, the authority *should* advertise it without the Running or Valid flag. Thus, the network-status vote includes all non-blacklisted, non-expired, non-superseded descriptors. The bandwidth in a "w" line should be taken as the best estimate of the router's actual capacity that the authority has. For now, this should be the lesser of the observed bandwidth and bandwidth rate limit from the router descriptor. It is given in kilobytes per second, and capped at some arbitrary value (currently 10 MB/s). The ports listed in a "p" line should be taken as those ports for which the router's exit policy permits 'most' addresses, ignoring any accept not for all addresses, ignoring all rejects for private netblocks. "Most" addresses are permitted if no more than 2^25 IPv4 addresses (two /8 networks) were blocked. The list is encoded as described in 3.4.2. 3.4. Computing a consensus from a set of votes Given a set of votes, authorities compute the contents of the consensus document as follows: The "valid-after", "valid-until", and "fresh-until" times are taken as the median of the respective values from all the votes. The times in the "voting-delay" line are taken as the median of the VoteSeconds and DistSeconds times in the votes. Known-flags is the union of all flags known by any voter. "client-versions" and "server-versions" are sorted in ascending order; A version is recommended in the consensus if it is recommended by more than half of the voting authorities that included a client-versions or server-versions lines in their votes. The authority item groups (dir-source, contact, fingerprint, vote-digest) are taken from the votes of the voting authorities. These groups are sorted by the digests of the authorities identity keys, in ascending order. If the consensus method is 3 or later, a dir-source line must be included for every vote with legacy-key entry, using the legacy-key's fingerprint, the voter's ordinary nickname with the string "-legacy" appended, and all other fields as from the original vote's dir-source line. A router status entry: * is included in the result if some router status entry with the same identity is included by more than half of the authorities (total authorities, not just those whose votes we have). * For any given identity, we include at most one router status entry. * A router entry has a flag set if that is included by more than half of the authorities who care about that flag. * Two router entries are "the same" if they have the same tuple. We choose the tuple for a given router as whichever tuple appears for that router in the most votes. We break ties first in favor of the more recently published, then in favor of smaller server descriptor digest. * The Named flag appears if it is included for this routerstatus by _any_ authority, and if all authorities that list it list the same nickname. However, if consensus-method 2 or later is in use, and any authority calls this identity/nickname pair Unnamed, then this routerstatus does not get the Named flag. * If consensus-method 2 or later is in use, the Unnamed flag is set for a routerstatus if any authorities have voted for a different identities to be Named with that nickname, or if any authority lists that nickname/ID pair as Unnamed. (With consensus-method 1, Unnamed is set like any other flag.) * The version is given as whichever version is listed by the most voters, with ties decided in favor of more recent versions. * If consensus-method 4 or later is in use, then routers that do not have the Running flag are not listed at all. * If consensus-method 5 or later is in use, then the "w" line is generated using a low-median of the bandwidth values from the votes that included "w" lines for this router. * If consensus-method 5 or later is in use, then the "p" line is taken from the votes that have the same policy summary for the descriptor we are listing. (They should all be the same. If they are not, we pick the most commonly listed one, breaking ties in favor of the lexicographically larger vote.) The port list is encoded as specified in 3.4.2. The signatures at the end of a consensus document are sorted in ascending order by identity digest. All ties in computing medians are broken in favor of the smaller or earlier item. 3.4.1. Forward compatibility Future versions of Tor will need to include new information in the consensus documents, but it is important that all authorities (or at least half) generate and sign the same signed consensus. To achieve this, authorities list in their votes their supported methods for generating consensuses from votes. Later methods will be assigned higher numbers. Currently recognized methods: "1" -- The first implemented version. "2" -- Added support for the Unnamed flag. "3" -- Added legacy ID key support to aid in authority ID key rollovers "4" -- No longer list routers that are not running in the consensus "5" -- adds support for "w" and "p" lines. Before generating a consensus, an authority must decide which consensus method to use. To do this, it looks for the highest version number supported by more than 2/3 of the authorities voting. If it supports this method, then it uses it. Otherwise, it falls back to method 1. (The consensuses generated by new methods must be parsable by implementations that only understand the old methods, and must not cause those implementations to compromise their anonymity. This is a means for making changes in the contents of consensus; not for making backward-incompatible changes in their format.) 3.4.2. Encoding port lists Whether the summary shows the list of accepted ports or the list of rejected ports depends on which list is shorter (has a shorter string representation). In case of ties we choose the list of accepted ports. As an exception to this rule an allow-all policy is represented as "accept 1-65535" instead of "reject " and a reject-all policy is similarly given as "reject 1-65535". Summary items are compressed, that is instead of "80-88,89-100" there only is a single item of "80-100", similarly instead of "20,21" a summary will say "20-21". Port lists are sorted in ascending order. The maximum allowed length of a policy summary (including the "accept " or "reject ") is 1000 characters. If a summary exceeds that length we use an accept-style summary and list as much of the port list as is possible within these 1000 bytes. [XXXX be more specific.] 3.5. Detached signatures Assuming full connectivity, every authority should compute and sign the same consensus directory in each period. Therefore, it isn't necessary to download the consensus computed by each authority; instead, the authorities only push/fetch each others' signatures. A "detached signature" document contains items as follows: "consensus-digest" SP Digest NL [At start, at most once.] The digest of the consensus being signed. "valid-after" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL "fresh-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL "valid-until" SP YYYY-MM-DD SP HH:MM:SS NL [As in the consensus] "directory-signature" [As in the consensus; the signature object is the same as in the consensus document.] 4. Directory server operation All directory authorities and directory caches ("directory servers") implement this section, except as noted. 4.1. Accepting uploads (authorities only) When a router posts a signed descriptor to a directory authority, the authority first checks whether it is well-formed and correctly self-signed. If it is, the authority next verifies that the nickname in question is not already assigned to a router with a different public key. Finally, the authority MAY check that the router is not blacklisted because of its key, IP, or another reason. If the descriptor passes these tests, and the authority does not already have a descriptor for a router with this public key, it accepts the descriptor and remembers it. If the authority _does_ have a descriptor with the same public key, the newly uploaded descriptor is remembered if its publication time is more recent than the most recent old descriptor for that router, and either: - There are non-cosmetic differences between the old descriptor and the new one. - Enough time has passed between the descriptors' publication times. (Currently, 12 hours.) Differences between router descriptors are "non-cosmetic" if they would be sufficient to force an upload as described in section 2 above. Note that the "cosmetic difference" test only applies to uploaded descriptors, not to descriptors that the authority downloads from other authorities. When a router posts a signed extra-info document to a directory authority, the authority again checks it for well-formedness and correct signature, and checks that its matches the extra-info-digest in some router descriptor that it believes is currently useful. If so, it accepts it and stores it and serves it as requested. If not, it drops it. 4.2. Voting (authorities only) Authorities divide time into Intervals. Authority administrators SHOULD try to all pick the same interval length, and SHOULD pick intervals that are commonly used divisions of time (e.g., 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes). Voting intervals SHOULD be chosen to divide evenly into a 24-hour day. Authorities SHOULD act according to interval and delays in the latest consensus. Lacking a latest consensus, they SHOULD default to a 30-minute Interval, a 5 minute VotingDelay, and a 5 minute DistDelay. Authorities MUST take pains to ensure that their clocks remain accurate within a few seconds. (Running NTP is usually sufficient.) The first voting period of each day begins at 00:00 (midnight) GMT. If the last period of the day would be truncated by one-half or more, it is merged with the second-to-last period. An authority SHOULD publish its vote immediately at the start of each voting period (minus VoteSeconds+DistSeconds). It does this by making it available at http:///tor/status-vote/next/authority.z and sending it in an HTTP POST request to each other authority at the URL http:///tor/post/vote If, at the start of the voting period, minus DistSeconds, an authority does not have a current statement from another authority, the first authority downloads the other's statement. Once an authority has a vote from another authority, it makes it available at http:///tor/status-vote/next/.z where is the fingerprint of the other authority's identity key. And at http:///tor/status-vote/next/d/.z where is the digest of the vote document. The consensus status, along with as many signatures as the server currently knows, should be available at http:///tor/status-vote/next/consensus.z All of the detached signatures it knows for consensus status should be available at: http:///tor/status-vote/next/consensus-signatures.z Once there are enough signatures, or once the voting period starts, these documents are available at http:///tor/status-vote/current/consensus.z and http:///tor/status-vote/current/consensus-signatures.z [XXX current/consensus-signatures is not currently implemented, as it is not used in the voting protocol.] The other vote documents are analogously made available under http:///tor/status-vote/current/authority.z http:///tor/status-vote/current/.z http:///tor/status-vote/current/d/.z once the consensus is complete. Once an authority has computed and signed a consensus network status, it should send its detached signature to each other authority in an HTTP POST request to the URL: http:///tor/post/consensus-signature [XXX Note why we support push-and-then-pull.] [XXX possible future features include support for downloading old consensuses.] 4.3. Downloading consensus status documents (caches only) All directory servers (authorities and caches) try to keep a recent network-status consensus document to serve to clients. A cache ALWAYS downloads a network-status consensus if any of the following are true: - The cache has no consensus document. - The cache's consensus document is no longer valid. Otherwise, the cache downloads a new consensus document at a randomly chosen time in the first half-interval after its current consensus stops being fresh. (This time is chosen at random to avoid swarming the authorities at the start of each period. The interval size is inferred from the difference between the valid-after time and the fresh-until time on the consensus.) [For example, if a cache has a consensus that became valid at 1:00, and is fresh until 2:00, that cache will fetch a new consensus at a random time between 2:00 and 2:30.] 4.4. Downloading and storing router descriptors (authorities and caches) Periodically (currently, every 10 seconds), directory servers check whether there are any specific descriptors that they do not have and that they are not currently trying to download. Caches identify these descriptors by hash in the recent network-status consensus documents; authorities identify them by hash in vote (if publication date is more recent than the descriptor we currently have). [XXXX need a way to fetch descriptors ahead of the vote? v2 status docs can do that for now.] If so, the directory server launches requests to the authorities for these descriptors, such that each authority is only asked for descriptors listed in its most recent vote (if the requester is an authority) or in the consensus (if the requester is a cache). If we're an authority, and more than one authority lists the descriptor, we choose which to ask at random. If one of these downloads fails, we do not try to download that descriptor from the authority that failed to serve it again unless we receive a newer network-status (consensus or vote) from that authority that lists the same descriptor. Directory servers must potentially cache multiple descriptors for each router. Servers must not discard any descriptor listed by any recent consensus. If there is enough space to store additional descriptors, servers SHOULD try to hold those which clients are likely to download the most. (Currently, this is judged based on the interval for which each descriptor seemed newest.) [XXXX define recent] Authorities SHOULD NOT download descriptors for routers that they would immediately reject for reasons listed in 3.1. 4.5. Downloading and storing extra-info documents All authorities, and any cache that chooses to cache extra-info documents, and any client that uses extra-info documents, should implement this section. Note that generally, clients don't need extra-info documents. Periodically, the Tor instance checks whether it is missing any extra-info documents: in other words, if it has any router descriptors with an extra-info-digest field that does not match any of the extra-info documents currently held. If so, it downloads whatever extra-info documents are missing. Caches download from authorities; non-caches try to download from caches. We follow the same splitting and back-off rules as in 4.4 (if a cache) or 5.3 (if a client). 4.6. General-use HTTP URLs "Fingerprints" in these URLs are base-16-encoded SHA1 hashes. The most recent v3 consensus should be available at: http:///tor/status-vote/current/consensus.z Starting with Tor version 0.2.1.1-alpha is also available at: http:///tor/status-vote/current/consensus/++.z Where F1, F2, etc. are authority identity fingerprints the client trusts. Servers will only return a consensus if more than half of the requested authorities have signed the document, otherwise a 404 error will be sent back. The fingerprints can be shortened to a length of any multiple of two, using only the leftmost part of the encoded fingerprint. Tor uses 3 bytes (6 hex characters) of the fingerprint. Clients SHOULD sort the fingerprints in ascending order. Server MUST accept any order. Clients SHOULD use this format when requesting consensus documents from directory authority servers and from caches running a version of Tor that is known to support this URL format. A concatenated set of all the current key certificates should be available at: http:///tor/keys/all.z The key certificate for this server (if it is an authority) should be available at: http:///tor/keys/authority.z The key certificate for an authority whose authority identity fingerprint is should be available at: http:///tor/keys/fp/.z The key certificate whose signing key fingerprint is should be available at: http:///tor/keys/sk/.z The key certificate whose identity key fingerprint is and whose signing key fingerprint is should be available at: http:///tor/keys/fp-sk/-.z (As usual, clients may request multiple certificates using: http:///tor/keys/fp-sk/-+-.z ) [The above fp-sk format was not supported before Tor 0.2.1.9-alpha.] The most recent descriptor for a server whose identity key has a fingerprint of should be available at: http:///tor/server/fp/.z The most recent descriptors for servers with identity fingerprints ,, should be available at: http:///tor/server/fp/++.z (NOTE: Implementations SHOULD NOT download descriptors by identity key fingerprint. This allows a corrupted server (in collusion with a cache) to provide a unique descriptor to a client, and thereby partition that client from the rest of the network.) The server descriptor with (descriptor) digest (in hex) should be available at: http:///tor/server/d/.z The most recent descriptors with digests ,, should be available at: http:///tor/server/d/++.z The most recent descriptor for this server should be at: http:///tor/server/authority.z [Nothing in the Tor protocol uses this resource yet, but it is useful for debugging purposes. Also, the official Tor implementations (starting at 0.1.1.x) use this resource to test whether a server's own DirPort is reachable.] A concatenated set of the most recent descriptors for all known servers should be available at: http:///tor/server/all.z Extra-info documents are available at the URLS http:///tor/extra/d/... http:///tor/extra/fp/... http:///tor/extra/all[.z] http:///tor/extra/authority[.z] (As for /tor/server/ URLs: supports fetching extra-info documents by their digest, by the fingerprint of their servers, or all at once. When serving by fingerprint, we serve the extra-info that corresponds to the descriptor we would serve by that fingerprint. Only directory authorities of version 0.2.0.1-alpha or later are guaranteed to support the first three classes of URLs. Caches may support them, and MUST support them if they have advertised "caches-extra-info".) For debugging, directories SHOULD expose non-compressed objects at URLs like the above, but without the final ".z". Clients MUST handle compressed concatenated information in two forms: - A concatenated list of zlib-compressed objects. - A zlib-compressed concatenated list of objects. Directory servers MAY generate either format: the former requires less CPU, but the latter requires less bandwidth. Clients SHOULD use upper case letters (A-F) when base16-encoding fingerprints. Servers MUST accept both upper and lower case fingerprints in requests. 5. Client operation: downloading information Every Tor that is not a directory server (that is, those that do not have a DirPort set) implements this section. 5.1. Downloading network-status documents Each client maintains a list of directory authorities. Insofar as possible, clients SHOULD all use the same list. Clients try to have a live consensus network-status document at all times. A network-status document is "live" if the time in its valid-until field has not passed. If a client is missing a live network-status document, it tries to fetch it from a directory cache (or from an authority if it knows no caches). On failure, the client waits briefly, then tries that network-status document again from another cache. The client does not build circuits until it has a live network-status consensus document, and it has descriptors for more than 1/4 of the routers that it believes are running. (Note: clients can and should pick caches based on the network-status information they have: once they have first fetched network-status info from an authority, they should not need to go to the authority directly again.) To avoid swarming the caches whenever a consensus expires, the clients download new consensuses at a randomly chosen time after the caches are expected to have a fresh consensus, but before their consensus will expire. (This time is chosen uniformly at random from the interval between the time 3/4 into the first interval after the consensus is no longer fresh, and 7/8 of the time remaining after that before the consensus is invalid.) [For example, if a cache has a consensus that became valid at 1:00, and is fresh until 2:00, and expires at 4:00, that cache will fetch a new consensus at a random time between 2:45 and 3:50, since 3/4 of the one-hour interval is 45 minutes, and 7/8 of the remaining 75 minutes is 65 minutes.] 5.2. Downloading and storing router descriptors Clients try to have the best descriptor for each router. A descriptor is "best" if: * It is listed in the consensus network-status document. Periodically (currently every 10 seconds) clients check whether there are any "downloadable" descriptors. A descriptor is downloadable if: - It is the "best" descriptor for some router. - The descriptor was published at least 10 minutes in the past. (This prevents clients from trying to fetch descriptors that the mirrors have probably not yet retrieved and cached.) - The client does not currently have it. - The client is not currently trying to download it. - The client would not discard it immediately upon receiving it. - The client thinks it is running and valid (see 6.1 below). If at least 16 known routers have downloadable descriptors, or if enough time (currently 10 minutes) has passed since the last time the client tried to download descriptors, it launches requests for all downloadable descriptors, as described in 5.3 below. When a descriptor download fails, the client notes it, and does not consider the descriptor downloadable again until a certain amount of time has passed. (Currently 0 seconds for the first failure, 60 seconds for the second, 5 minutes for the third, 10 minutes for the fourth, and 1 day thereafter.) Periodically (currently once an hour) clients reset the failure count. Clients retain the most recent descriptor they have downloaded for each router so long as it is not too old (currently, 48 hours), OR so long as no better descriptor has been downloaded for the same router. [Versions of Tor before 0.1.2.3-alpha would discard descriptors simply for being published too far in the past.] [The code seems to discard descriptors in all cases after they're 5 days old. True? -RD] 5.3. Managing downloads When a client has no consensus network-status document, it downloads it from a randomly chosen authority. In all other cases, the client downloads from caches randomly chosen from among those believed to be V2 directory servers. (This information comes from the network-status documents; see 6 below.) When downloading multiple router descriptors, the client chooses multiple mirrors so that: - At least 3 different mirrors are used, except when this would result in more than one request for under 4 descriptors. - No more than 128 descriptors are requested from a single mirror. - Otherwise, as few mirrors as possible are used. After choosing mirrors, the client divides the descriptors among them randomly. After receiving any response client MUST discard any network-status documents and descriptors that it did not request. 6. Using directory information Everyone besides directory authorities uses the approaches in this section to decide which servers to use and what their keys are likely to be. (Directory authorities just believe their own opinions, as in 3.1 above.) 6.1. Choosing routers for circuits. Circuits SHOULD NOT be built until the client has enough directory information: a live consensus network status [XXXX fallback?] and descriptors for at least 1/4 of the servers believed to be running. A server is "listed" if it is included by the consensus network-status document. Clients SHOULD NOT use unlisted servers. These flags are used as follows: - Clients SHOULD NOT use non-'Valid' or non-'Running' routers unless requested to do so. - Clients SHOULD NOT use non-'Fast' routers for any purpose other than very-low-bandwidth circuits (such as introduction circuits). - Clients SHOULD NOT use non-'Stable' routers for circuits that are likely to need to be open for a very long time (such as those used for IRC or SSH connections). - Clients SHOULD NOT choose non-'Guard' nodes when picking entry guard nodes. - Clients SHOULD NOT download directory information from non-'V2Dir' caches. See the "path-spec.txt" document for more details. 6.2. Managing naming In order to provide human-memorable names for individual server identities, some directory servers bind names to IDs. Clients handle names in two ways: When a client encounters a name it has not mapped before: If the consensus lists any router with that name as "Named", or if consensus-method 2 or later is in use and the consensus lists any router with that name as having the "Unnamed" flag, then the name is bound. (It's bound to the ID listed in the entry with the Named, or to an unknown ID if no name is found.) When the user refers to a bound name, the implementation SHOULD provide only the router with ID bound to that name, and no other router, even if the router with the right ID can't be found. When a user tries to refer to a non-bound name, the implementation SHOULD warn the user. After warning the user, the implementation MAY use any router that advertises the name. Not every router needs a nickname. When a router doesn't configure a nickname, it publishes with the default nickname "Unnamed". Authorities SHOULD NOT ever mark a router with this nickname as Named; client software SHOULD NOT ever use a router in response to a user request for a router called "Unnamed". 6.3. Software versions An implementation of Tor SHOULD warn when it has fetched a consensus network-status, and it is running a software version not listed. 6.4. Warning about a router's status. If a router tries to publish its descriptor to a Naming authority that has its nickname mapped to another key, the router SHOULD warn the operator that it is either using the wrong key or is using an already claimed nickname. If a router has fetched a consensus document,, and the authorities do not publish a binding for the router's nickname, the router MAY remind the operator that the chosen nickname is not bound to this key at the authorities, and suggest contacting the authority operators. ... 6.5. Router protocol versions A client should believe that a router supports a given feature if that feature is supported by the router or protocol versions in more than half of the live networkstatuses' "v" entries for that router. In other words, if the "v" entries for some router are: v Tor 0.0.8pre1 (from authority 1) v Tor 0.1.2.11 (from authority 2) v FutureProtocolDescription 99 (from authority 3) then the client should believe that the router supports any feature supported by 0.1.2.11. This is currently equivalent to believing the median declared version for a router in all live networkstatuses. 7. Standards compliance All clients and servers MUST support HTTP 1.0. Clients and servers MAY support later versions of HTTP as well. 7.1. HTTP headers Servers MAY set the Content-Length: header. Servers SHOULD set Content-Encoding to "deflate" or "identity". Servers MAY include an X-Your-Address-Is: header, whose value is the apparent IP address of the client connecting to them (as a dotted quad). For directory connections tunneled over a BEGIN_DIR stream, servers SHOULD report the IP from which the circuit carrying the BEGIN_DIR stream reached them. [Servers before version 0.1.2.5-alpha reported 127.0.0.1 for all BEGIN_DIR-tunneled connections.] Servers SHOULD disable caching of multiple network statuses or multiple router descriptors. Servers MAY enable caching of single descriptors, single network statuses, the list of all router descriptors, a v1 directory, or a v1 running routers document. XXX mention times. 7.2. HTTP status codes Tor delivers the following status codes. Some were chosen without much thought; other code SHOULD NOT rely on specific status codes yet. 200 -- the operation completed successfully -- the user requested statuses or serverdescs, and none of the ones we requested were found (0.2.0.4-alpha and earlier). 304 -- the client specified an if-modified-since time, and none of the requested resources have changed since that time. 400 -- the request is malformed, or -- the URL is for a malformed variation of one of the URLs we support, or -- the client tried to post to a non-authority, or -- the authority rejected a malformed posted document, or 404 -- the requested document was not found. -- the user requested statuses or serverdescs, and none of the ones requested were found (0.2.0.5-alpha and later). 503 -- we are declining the request in order to save bandwidth -- user requested some items that we ordinarily generate or store, but we do not have any available. 9. Backward compatibility and migration plans Until Tor versions before 0.1.1.x are completely obsolete, directory authorities should generate, and mirrors should download and cache, v1 directories and running-routers lists, and allow old clients to download them. These documents and the rules for retrieving, serving, and caching them are described in dir-spec-v1.txt. Until Tor versions before 0.2.0.x are completely obsolete, directory authorities should generate, mirrors should download and cache, v2 network-status documents, and allow old clients to download them. Additionally, all directory servers and caches should download, store, and serve any router descriptor that is required because of v2 network-status documents. These documents and the rules for retrieving, serving, and caching them are described in dir-spec-v1.txt. A. Consensus-negotiation timeline. Period begins: this is the Published time. Everybody sends votes Reconciliation: everybody tries to fetch missing votes. consensus may exist at this point. End of voting period: everyone swaps signatures. Now it's okay for caches to download Now it's okay for clients to download. Valid-after/valid-until switchover