RELIABILITY / LATENCY / KEY DISTRIBUTION
Pingers.
A single reference for pinger basics, current YAMN sources and client inputs.
01 / PURPOSE
Independent observation.
Echolot pingers monitor anonymous remailers by sending periodic test messages and measuring whether replies return. Their statistics describe observed uptime and latency over time. They also distribute remailer capability data and public keyrings required to construct encrypted routes.
A pinger does not prove that a remailer is trustworthy. It reports reachability and timing from one observer’s point of view.
02 / OUTPUTS
Files used by clients.
| Output | Purpose |
|---|---|
mlist2.txt | YAMN-compatible latency, uptime and role or capability statistics. |
mlist2.html | Human-readable statistics view. |
pubring.mix | Public keys used by clients when wrapping hop headers. |
| Thesaurus / replies | Collected remailer configuration, help and key responses. |
03 / CURRENT SOURCES
Current YAMN pingers.
These independent sources publish statistics and public keys used by YAMN clients. Endpoint availability can change.
Victor and Mixmin expose dedicated indexes. Frell remains a fallback source used by the Yamnweb updater.
04 / CLIENT INPUTS
Use YAMN-compatible statistics.
YAMN route selection expects stats-version 2 data. The conventional file is mlist2.txt, although some YAMN-specific directories retain mlist.txt as the filename. Always inspect the file header and content instead of assuming compatibility from the name alone.
The matching pubring.mix is equally important. A remailer present in statistics but missing a current, valid public key cannot be selected safely for encoding.
05 / VICTOR
Victor pinger.
Victor publishes current YAMN v2 reliability data and the matching public keyring from echolot.virebent.art.
06 / SEC3 ARCHIVE
Former SEC3 pinger.
The SEC3 pinger base, remailer lists, keyrings and machine-readable index are no longer available at their original host. Their dead links have been removed rather than presented as active network observations.
SEC3 remains credited as the maintainer of the historical directory.
07 / CURRENT DATA
Use active YAMN observations.
For current routes and public keys, use the current sources at the top of this page. Always compare multiple independent pingers before selecting a route.