Re: Pool dried up

[Andrew Gallagher]

Hi, Todd.

On 23/03/2021 03:37, Todd Fleisher wrote:
> > On Mar 22, 2021, at 13:28, Andrew Gallagher <andrewg@andrewg.com 
> > <mailto:andrewg@andrewg.com>> wrote:
> >
> > I happened to check the pool just now, and there are only three nodes 
> > in it:
> >
> > 1pgpkeys.uk <http://pgpkeys.uk>[@]
> > 2sks.pod01.fleetstreetops.com <http://sks.pod01.fleetstreetops.com>[@]
> > 3sks.pod02.fleetstreetops.com <http://sks.pod02.fleetstreetops.com>[@]

BTW it has just happened again:

1 pgpkeys.eu[@]                                         
2 pgpkeys.uk[@]                                         
3 sks.pod02.fleetstreetops.com[@]               

> > Looking at the cached metadata it appears that when the spider ran, 
> > pod02.fleetstreetops nodes was unavailable, as was pgpkeys.co.uk 
> > <http://pgpkeys.co.uk> (the domain registration has expired).
>
> I can’t speak for pgpkeys.co.uk <http://pgpkeys.co.uk>, but I have not 
> seen any issues with sks.pod02.fleetstreetops.com 
> <http://sks.pod02.fleetstreetops.com> (nor hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net 
> <http://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net>, which it powers) today.

Apologies, I didn't mean to cast doubt on the reliability of your node, 
but rather on that of the spider. It does not maintain much of a 
historical record, and so depends on a single measurement per node each 
hour for its operation. This makes it very vulnerable to transient 
issues, such as connection timeouts. One dropped connection, and 90% of 
the pool disappears for an hour, even if all the nodes stay up.

There are a few interlocking design issues at work here IMO, none of 
which are the responsibility of individual operators.

--
Andrew Gallagher

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