performance improvements

Tor 0.2.2.15-alpha fixes a big bug in hidden service availability, fixes a variety of other bugs that were preventing performance experiments from moving forward, fixes several bothersome memory leaks, and generally closes a lot of smaller bugs that have been filling up trac lately.

https://www.torproject.org/download

Changes in version 0.2.2.15-alpha - 2010-08-18
o Major bugfixes:
- Stop assigning the HSDir flag to relays that disable their
DirPort (and thus will refuse to answer directory requests). This
fix should dramatically improve the reachability of hidden services:
hidden services and hidden service clients pick six HSDir relays
to store and retrieve the hidden service descriptor, and currently
about half of the HSDir relays will refuse to work. Bugfix on
0.2.0.10-alpha; fixes part of bug 1693. read more »

New releases read more »

• On July 4th, we released Tor Browser Bundle 1.3.7 for Microsoft Windows. This is a security update for Firefox and Pidgin. The changes are: update to Firefox 3.5.10 and Pidgin Instant Messenger 2.7.1r2 to fix some security issues.
• On July 6th, we released Tor Browser Bundle 1.0.8 for GNU/Linux distributions. This fixes a number of security issues with included software. The updates include:
  • Update libpng to 1.4.3 (see CVE-2010-1205)
  • Update Firefox to 3.5.10
  • Update HTTPS Everywhere to 0.2.1

Tor 0.2.2.14-alpha greatly improves client-side handling of circuit build
timeouts, which are used to estimate speed and improve performance. We
also move to a much better GeoIP database, port Tor to Windows CE,
introduce new compile flags that improve code security, add an eighth
v3 directory authority, and address a lot of more minor issues.

https://www.torproject.org/download

Packages will be appearing over the next few days or weeks. (We've decided
to start announcing alpha versions when they're released, rather than
waiting for all the packages first.)

Changes in version 0.2.2.14-alpha - 2010-07-12
o Major bugfixes:
- Tor directory authorities no longer crash when started with a
cached-microdesc-consensus file in their data directory. Bugfix
on 0.2.2.6-alpha; fixes bug 1532.
- Treat an unset $HOME like an empty $HOME rather than triggering an
assert. Bugfix on 0.0.8pre1; fixes bug 1522. read more »

Tor 0.2.2.12-alpha fixes a critical bug in how directory authorities
handle and vote on descriptors. It was causing relays to drop out of
the consensus.

Tor 0.2.2.11-alpha fixes yet another instance of broken OpenSSL libraries
that was causing some relays to drop out of the consensus.

(Windows bundles will be available whenever Andrew gets around to making
them; we're trying to stick to a policy of announcing alphas on time
rather than waiting for every package.)

https://www.torproject.org/download.html.en

Original announcement is at http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Apr-2010/msg00174.html

Changes in version 0.2.2.12-alpha - 2010-04-20
o Major bugfixes:
- Many relays have been falling out of the consensus lately because
not enough authorities know about their descriptor for them to get
a majority of votes. When we deprecated the v2 directory protocol,
we got rid of the only way that v3 authorities can hear from each read more »

Here's what the Tor Project accomplished in September 2009.

New Hires read more »

• Carolyn Anhalt is our new Translation and Community Manager. Carolyn has years of experience managing and growing content translation, as well as wrangling online communities and developing volunteer moderators and support roles from the community. She’s fluent or conversant in a number of languages, such as: Russian, French, English, German, Italian, and Welsh. Carolyn’s initial goals are to grow the translator community to keep everything Tor translated, work out better translation tools for translators, and to generally assist translators.
• Karen Reilly joins us as our Development Director. Karen has years of experience in growing both community-based and foundation-based funding, as well as helping to fulfill the mission of organizations through outreach and community-building. Karen’s initial goals are to further develop community funding, work with our current donors, help create an annual report, and expand Tor’s outreach efforts.

On September 21st, we released Tor version 0.2.2.2-alpha.

Major features: read more »

• Tor now tracks how long it takes to build client-side circuits
  over time, and adapts its timeout to local network performance.
  Since a circuit that takes a long time to build will also provide
  bad performance, we get significant latency improvements by
  discarding the slowest 20% of circuits. Specifically, Tor creates
  circuits more aggressively than usual until it has enough data
  points for a good timeout estimate. Implements proposal 151.
  We are especially looking for reports (good and bad) from users with
  both EDGE and broadband connections that can move from broadband
  to EDGE and find out if the build-time data in the .tor/state gets
  reset without loss of Tor usability. You should also see a notice
  log message telling you that Tor has reset its timeout.