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Building Incentives into Tor

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Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC 2010)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 6052))

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Abstract

Distributed anonymous communication networks like Tor depend on volunteers to donate their resources. However, the efforts of Tor volunteers have not grown as fast as the demands on the Tor network. We explore techniques to incentivize Tor users to relay Tor traffic too; if users contribute resources to the Tor overlay, they should receive faster service in return. In our design, the central Tor directory authorities measure performance and publish a list of Tor relays that should be given higher priority when establishing circuits. Simulations of our proposed design show that conforming users receive significant improvements in performance, in some cases experiencing twice the network throughput of selfish users who do not relay traffic for the Tor network.

This research was funded, in part, by NSF grants CNS-0524211, CNS-0509297, and CNS-0959138. The first author did part of this work while at Rice University.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Google Inc.,  

    Tsuen-Wan “Johnny” Ngan

  2. The Tor Project,  

    Roger Dingledine

  3. Department of Computer Science, Rice University,  

    Dan S. Wallach

Authors
  1. Tsuen-Wan “Johnny” Ngan
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  2. Roger Dingledine
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  3. Dan S. Wallach
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Stony Brook, Stony Brook University, 11794, NY, USA

    Radu Sion

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“Johnny” Ngan, TW., Dingledine, R., Wallach, D.S. (2010). Building Incentives into Tor. In: Sion, R. (eds) Financial Cryptography and Data Security. FC 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6052. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14577-3_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14577-3_19

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-14576-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-14577-3

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