DiProber: Using Dual Probing to Estimate Tor Relay Capacities in Underloaded Networks

Abstract: Tor is the most popular anonymous communication network. It has millions of daily users seeking privacy while browsing the internet. It has thousands of relays to route and anonymize the source and destinations of the users packets. To create a path, Tor authorities generate a probability distribution over relays based on the estimates of the capacities of the relays. An incoming user will then sample this probability distribution and choose three relays for their paths. The estimates are based on the bandwidths of observation probes the authority assigns to each relay in the network. Thus, in order to achieve better load balancing between users, accurate estimates are necessary. Unfortunately, the currently implemented estimation algorithm generate inaccurate estimates causing the network to be under utilized and its capacities unfairly distributed between the users paths. We propose DiProber, a new relay capacity estimation algorithm. The algorithm proposes a new measurement scheme in Tor consisting of two probes per relay and uses maximum likelihood to estimate their capacities. We show that the new technique works better in the case of under-utilized networks where users tend to have very low demand on the Tor network.