Handling RELAY_EARLY cells

A RELAY_EARLY cell is designed to limit the length any circuit can reach. When an OR receives a RELAY_EARLY cell, and the next node in the circuit is speaking v2 of the link protocol or later, the OR relays the cell as a RELAY_EARLY cell. Otherwise, older Tors will relay it as a RELAY cell.

If a node ever receives more than 8 RELAY_EARLY cells on a given outbound circuit, it SHOULD close the circuit. If it receives any inbound RELAY_EARLY cells, it MUST close the circuit immediately.

When speaking v2 of the link protocol or later, clients MUST only send EXTEND/EXTEND2 message inside RELAY_EARLY cells. Clients SHOULD send the first ~8 relay cells that are not targeted at the first hop of any circuit as RELAY_EARLY cells too, in order to partially conceal the circuit length.

[Starting with Tor 0.2.3.11-alpha, relays should reject any EXTEND/EXTEND2 cell not received in a RELAY_EARLY cell.]