Tor's startup time is getting slower on Android
When upgrading Briar's Tor binaries from 0.2.9.16 to 0.3.4.8, we noticed a difference in Tor's startup time on older Android phones.
Measuring the startup time of several recent Tor versions revealed an interesting pattern. The time that elapses between starting the Tor process and the creation of the authentication cookie file hasn't changed across versions, but the time between the creation of the cookie file and the response to the AUTHENTICATE command has changed substantially. (Briar sends the AUTHENTICATE command as soon as the cookie file's created.)
I measured five runs of each version on a Motorola Moto G 4G running Android 5.1. Here are the min and max times in seconds for each version:
= Tor version = | = Min = | = Max = |
---|---|---|
0.2.9.16 | 3.5 | 4.3 |
0.2.9.17 | 3.5 | 4.2 |
0.3.0.1-alpha | 4.8 | 13.0 |
0.3.1.1-alpha | 9.9 | 16.2 |
0.3.2.1-alpha | 15.3 | 19.9 |
0.3.3.1-alpha | 15.8 | 18.5 |
0.3.4.1-alpha | 16.1 | 18.4 |
0.3.4.8 | 16.2 | 20.9 |
0.3.4.9 | 16.1 | 23.7 |
The min and max have both increased substantially since 0.2.9, and the distribution has widened. This is having a noticeable impact on how long it takes for Briar to connect to contacts when the app's started.
I'll repeat these experiments on Linux x64 to see whether this is Android-specific.
Trac:
Username: akwizgran