David Merriman writes:
This may have been hashed out in a previous incarnation, but on the subject of remailers and their availability, why not just have each one broadcast a message of it's availability periodically (hourly? every 4 hours?) on, say, the Cypherpunks mailing list. Then, each remailer could also listen in, read in who's up, and if it doesn't hear from a remailer within some period of time (or some number of scheduled broadcasts), assume that it's down until it hears from that system again. This would also allow individuals to maintain personal listings of available remailers, as well, and automate the process of keeping track of what remailers are up/down/available. The additional traffic wouldn't seem to be _too_ much of a burden, those individuals who didn't want the broadcasts cluttering up their mailboxes could filter them out, and doesn't require massive effort or changes to implement (ie, new newsgroups, etc). What blazingly obvious thing am I missing here, or does it make too much sense to work? :-)
Several flaws: Mailing lists are a poor forum for sending "I'm up" messages out, for various reasons: 1. Volume. 20 remailers x a message every 4 hours = 120 message a day to the list. Not a good idea, for many reasons. 2. Scaling. Even with fewer than 20 remailers, the system breaks down. Imagine if our goal of hundreds of remailers is met! 3. Not automated. Sending a text message out to everyone, and then having interested folks write a script to parse the messages and whatnot, is more work (probably) than having them finger or ping the remailers themselves (don't have to go through mail as the intermediary). And the remailer operators themselves would have to do the donkeywork of creating and sending messages automatically, which most of them probably won't do. 4. Mail to the list is hardly perfect itself, as we've seen many times. Delays, downtime, etc. Why inject a new delay/variable? 5. Function. Basically, it's not the function of a mailing list like ours to broadcast such messages. If many remailers do it, why not money providers, other mailing lists, etc.? 6. Not all remailer users are going to be on the Cyherpunks list, so why would the list be the solution? (Better would be either distribution of the pinging scripts, a centralized finger pinger (I like the sound of that: "finger pinger") such as Matt Ghio was running, or perhaps an "alt.anonymous.messages.status" group, acting as a message pool. These are just the objections that come inmmediately to mind. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."