When does a relay get the Named flag?

Question

A new relay of mine has been flagged as Stable and Guard, but not Named. What are the criteria for receiving the Named flag?

Answer 1

It used to be manually assigned by the authority operators, but a couple of years ago I wrote a set of scripts to vote on Named automatically.

We have documented their behavior in dir-spec:

Newer Naming authorities run a script that registers routers in their mapping files once the routers have been online at least two weeks, no other router has that nickname, and no other router has wanted the nickname for a month. If a router has not been online for six months, the router is removed.

Answer 2

From the Tor directory specification (emphasis added):

Named – Directory authority administrators may decide to support name binding. If they do, then they must maintain a file of nickname-to-identity-key mappings, and try to keep this file consistent with other directory authorities. If they don't, they act as clients, and report bindings made by other directory authorities (name X is bound to identity Y if at least one binding directory lists it, and no directory binds X to some other Y'.) A router is called Named if the router believes the given name should be bound to the given key.

Two strategies exist on the current network for deciding on values for the Named flag. In the original version, relay operators were asked to send nickname-identity pairs to a mailing list of Naming directory authorities' operators. The operators were then supposed to add the pairs to their mapping files; in practice, they didn't get to this often.

Newer Naming authorities run a script that registers routers in their mapping files once the routers have been online at least two weeks, no other router has that nickname, and no other router has wanted the nickname for a month. If a router has not been online for six months, the router is removed.

Once the relay gets the Named flag it won't stop other people giving the same name to their node, but since only one node with a given name can have the Named flag, it will allow users to unambiguously refer to your node by name.

Section 6.2 of the Tor Directory Specification is also relevant:

When a client encounters a name it has not mapped before:

If the consensus lists any router with that name as "Named", or if consensus-method 2 or later is in use and the consensus lists any router with that name as having the "Unnamed" flag, then the name is bound. (It's bound to the ID listed in the entry with the Named, or to an unknown ID if no name is found.)

When the user refers to a bound name, the implementation SHOULD provide only the router with ID bound to that name, and no other router, even if the router with the right ID can't be found.