[Tor-BSD] FreeBSD tor-devel config options

[Pete Wright]

On 01/08/15 12:53, George Rosamond wrote:
> Pete Wright:
>> Hey All,
>> I was doing some testing with my FreeBSD tor systems while poking around
>> for potential optimizations.  I have found that setting the following
>> compilation flags for the tor-devel FreeBSD port have lowered CPU load
>> on my systems, and from the looks of things this may have lead to an
>> increase of utilization of my circuit.
>>
>> enable: BUFFREELISTS
>> enable: INSTR_DOWNLOADS
>> enable: MEMPOOLS
>> enable: THREADS [default]
>> enable: TRANSPARENT [default]
>>
>>
>> My guess is that enabling the MEMEPOOLS and BUFFREELISTS options has
>> helped on my end.  I attempted to enable BUFFREEEVENTS as well, but that
>> generated lots of logging data.  I may attempt to re-enable that once I
>> have more data with my current configuration.
> 
> This is good stuff Pete.
> 
> The only question I have is the actual comparison of 'before' and
> 'after', as I've raised before.
> 
> If Tor was some static network it would be easy to test, but it's not.
> So while the system might locally seem to perform better, it's still in
> isolation to the public network that is randomly creating circuits.
> 
> The 'increased utilization' question is hard.  There are the normal
> waves and troughs of the globe, ie, it's slower when it's 9-5 over the
> Pacific Ocean, since that's the time most traffic is happening in any
> particular locale from what I've been told.
> 
> I'm guessing we'd need a closed network with a directory authority and
> all to really quantify this.... but that still doesnt deal with the
> randomness of circuit selection.
> 
> Personally, CPU utilization never seemed to be the main weakness in Tor
> performance, although I'm not discounting your tweaks as ineffective.
> 
> I'll check out your hax myself on NYCBUG0 which runs FreeBSD 10-stable.
> 

yea agreed, the lack of data on my end - compounded with the
non-reproducibility of production tor traffic def lands this in the
"works for me - ymmv" bucket.

i am going to run this as-is for a while on my side and if i do not see
any ill side effects i will most likely file a PR against this port
asking to make the BUFFREELISTS and MEMPOOLS options default compile flags.

cheers,
-pete


-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org
twitter => @nomadlogicLA