Re: [Sks-devel] SKS apocalypse mitigation

[Andrew Gallagher]

> On 5 May 2018, at 10:55, Kiss Gabor (Bitman) <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Suboptimal solutions are also acceptable.
> I don't think we alwys need the best (and most expensive way).
> "Almost the best" is good enough in most of practical cases.

We need to define our metric to determine what particular degrees of 
“suboptimal” are acceptable. Timeliness has never been a strong feature of sks 
and so probably shouldn’t be prioritised now. Accessibility however is crucial, 
and anything that could result in updated data being uploaded somewhere it is 
unlikely to be found is a deal breaker imo. DNS uses a hierarchical structure 
to ensure accessibility, sks uses gossip. If we get rid of gossip but don’t 
impose a hierarchy we could go far beyond “suboptimal”. 

> However some simulation of spreading keys and signatures would
> be really useful.

Agreed. Anything that changes the behaviour of a distributed system needs 
realistic performance testing in virtuo.

A