Dev Tips

Which remote hosts (machines) to deploy to

• We will use the lab2-NN.cs.mcgill.ca machines as the nodes in our network, where NN takes on any range of values (you choose when you test or run our code) from 1 to 50.
• We will use cs-1.cs.mcgill.ca as our directory node and cs-2.cs.mcgill.ca as our destination node for testing the network. We will use cs-10.cs.mcgill.ca as the originator.

Cookbook on setting up a testing environment

• SSH into lab2-NN.cs.mcgill.ca NN = 1,2,3
• change the prompts so as to easily identify each one: PS1="NODE NN > "
• SSH into cs-NN.cs.mcgill.ca NN = 1,2,10
• change the prompts so as to easily identify each one:
  • PS1="DIR > " for cs-1
  • PS1="DST > " for cs-2
  • PS1="SRC > " for cs-10
• Turn on the Directory node with 5 nodes on port 5551: python3 onion_directory.py 5 5551
• Turn on the all the Router nodes on port 5551: python3 onion_router.py 5551
• Turn on the Destination node on port 5557: python3 onion_destination.py 5557
• Turn on the Source node to connect to the destination node through port 5557 and communicate with the onion network through port 5551: python3 onion_client.py cs-2 5551 -d 5557
• When debugging, add the verbose flag -v at the end of each onion command to get useful status messages

The McGill firewall

The McGill firewall prevents us from connecting to one of its computers over non-standard TCP ports like we're doing (it probably stops a bunch more too). To get around this, we should run the originator code on a computer inside the McGill network. For convention, let's pick cs-10.cs.mcgill.ca.

Misc

• Useful paper on onion routing: https://www.onion-router.net/Publications/IH-1996.pdf