Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Outbound connections rotation

From: Pieter Wuille <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 19:35:00 +0200

Yes, I believe peer rotation is useful, but not for privacy - just for
improving the network's internal knowledge.

I haven't looked at the implementation yet, but how I imagined it would be
every X minutes you attempt a new outgoing connection, even if you're
already at the outbound limit. Then, if a connection attempt succeeds,
another connection (according to some scoring system) is replaced by it.
Given such a mechanism, plus reasonable assurances that better connections
survive for a longer time, I have no problem with rotating every few
minutes.
On Aug 18, 2014 7:23 PM, "Gregory Maxwell" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 18, 2014 at 9:46 AM, Ivan Pustogarov <[email-masked]>
> wrote:
> > Hi there,
> > I'd like to start a discussion on periodic rotation of outbound
> connections.
> > E.g. every 2-10 minutes an outbound connections is dropped and replaced
> > by a new one.
>
> Connection rotation would be fine for improving a node's knoweldge
> about available peers and making the network stronger against
> partitioning.
>
> I haven't implemented this because I think your motivation is
> _precisely_ opposite the behavior. If you keep a constant set of
> outbound peers only those peers learn the origin of your transactions,
> and so it is unlikely that any particular attacker will gain strong
> evidence. If you rotate where you send out your transactions then with
> very high probability a sybil pretending to be many nodes will observe
> you transmitting directly.
>
> Ultimately, since the traffic is clear text, if you expect to have any
> privacy at all in your broadcasts you should be broadcasting over tor
> or i2p.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>