Users
We estimate the number of users by analyzing the requests induced by clients to relays and bridges.
This graph shows the estimated number of clients connecting via bridges. These numbers are derived from directory requests counted on bridges. Bridges resolve client IP addresses of incoming directory requests to country codes, so that graphs are available for most countries. For further details check the documentation on Reproducible Metrics.
Related events
The following events have been manually collected in the metrics-timeline Git repository and might be related to the displayed graph.
| Dates | Places/Protocols | Description and Links |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-02-28 | Bridges |
BridgeDB moves to an rdsys backend.
announcement issue |
| 2022-02-18 | snowflake |
Outage of the Snowflake bridge.
mailing list post |
| 2022-02-01 |
Tor 0.3.5 reaches end of life.
mailing list post |
|
| 2022-01-31 | snowflake |
Switched the snowflake bridge from a load-balanced staging server back to the now load-balanced production server. Debugged connection problems until 2022-01-31 19:52:04.
issue comment comment |
| 2022-01-28 | snowflake |
Switched the snowflake-server (at the time running on a load-balanced staging server) for a version with CPU profiling.
comment |
| 2022-01-25 | snowflake |
Switched the snowflake bridge to a temporary load-balanced staging server. Debugged connection problems until 2022-01-25 18:47:00.
issue comment post comment |
| 2022-01-07 | snowflake |
Increased capacity of the mapping to client IP addresses on the snowflake bridge.
issue deployment comment |
| 2021-12-29 | snowflake |
Outage of the snowflake bridge.
comment alert |
| 2021-12-22 | snowflake |
Rebooted the Snowflake bridge to increase the number of CPUs from 4 to 8.
issue |
| 2021-12-14 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 11.5a1, with an altered DTLS fingerprint in Snowflake to counteract blocking in Russia.
blog post issue NTC post |
| 2021-12-08 | obfs4 |
Release of Tor Browser 11.0.2, containing a new default obfs4 bridge "deusexmachina".
blog post issue |
| 2021-11-17 to 2022-02-02 | obfs4 |
Run a Tor Bridge campaign, offers rewards for running obfs4 bridges.
blog post about start blog post about end |
| 2021-11-08 |
Removal of roughly 600 "KAX17" non-exit relays.
mailing list post relay graph article |
|
| 2021-11-08 | onion |
Release of Tor Browser 11.0. Final deprecation of v2 onion services.
blog post deprecation timeline graph |
| 2021-09-22 to 2021-10-07 |
Experiment to investigate the accuracy of relays' advertised bandwidth.
status.torproject.org mailing list post advertised bandwidth graph |
|
| 2021-08-27 to 2021-09-08 |
Experiment to investigate the accuracy of relays' advertised bandwidth.
status.torproject.org mailing list post advertised bandwidth graph |
|
| 2021-08-12 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Thu, 12 Aug 2021 05:51:15 GMT" (geoip-db-digest B3A9770171D3060502B7F13C0618BE109B92DF6C, geoip6-db-digest 410B70763FC675B3622264FAA0FC67B78FDE30C2).
commit |
| 2021-07-06 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 10.5, first stable release that includes Snowflake.
blog post |
| 2021-06-15 | snowflake |
Snowflake bridge down for scheduled upgrade.
comment |
| 2021-06-12 to 2021-06-13 | snowflake |
Outage of Snowflake bridge.
issue |
| 2021-06-10 to present |
Experiment to test latencies between relays.
status.torproject.org post announcing start |
|
| 2021-06-10 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Thu, 10 Jun 2021 05:17:29 GMT" (geoip-db-digest 900E9BD6C8B8679A1539F7F316974E86618038B2, geoip6-db-digest 456BCA0796A27F8C80674EE89B1323F8310BED39).
commit |
| 2021-05-17 to 2021-06-05 |
Experiment to test the accuracy of relays' advertised bandwidth estimation.
status.torproject.org post announcing start post announcing end advertised bandwidth graph relay flags graph |
|
| 2021-05-14 to 2021-05-18 | meek Unknown |
The number of meek users temporarily drops to < 10.
graph |
| 2021-05-12 to 2021-06-21 | snowflake |
Error in stats collection at the Snowflake bridge; user count is erroneously zero.
merge request comment on start comment on end user count graph |
| 2021-05-07 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Fri, 07 May 2021 05:18:14 GMT" (geoip-db-digest AE864EA783E3776E4950859B5B35F412977F876F, geoip6-db-digest 7008D77E958D919E432AAE7F5C2002B14604FFFE).
commit |
| 2021-05-03 | snowflake |
Outage of snowflake bridge.
comment |
| 2021-04-13 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Tue, 13 Apr 2021 05:11:07 GMT" (geoip-db-digest D63E30D25E7767178177C53A0248083011B4202A, geoip6-db-digest 891E8F6FBC7973144E335F0D815B5AF6B6DDF74B).
commit |
| 2021-03-16 | ipv4 ipv6 |
Release of tor 0.3.5.14, 0.4.4.8, and 0.4.5.7. Changes the source of geolocation databases from Maxmind to IPFire.
blog post announcement ticket commit |
| 2021-03-12 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "IPFire Project Fri, 12 Mar 2021 05:05:24 GMT" (geoip-db-digest 7EFC262380D93924340A0000DF78EC4DD3BFC0E5, geoip6-db-digest B53EF6F829B6A1B1DD242835B6A23580178FBE13).
commit |
| 2021-03-10 |
Fire in the OVHcloud data centers located in Strasbourg takes about 48 relays offline in AS16276.
OVHcloud advisory Twitter thread |
|
| 2021-03-09 | flashproxy |
Decommissioned flash proxy badge server, flashproxy.bamsoftware.com.
|
| 2021-03-08 | flashproxy |
Decommissioned flash proxy facilitator: server, flashproxy-reg-email poller, and flashproxy-reg-appspot app.
|
| 2021-03-08 | snowflake |
Outage of the Snowflake bridge.
ticket |
| 2021-01-27 | snowflake |
Deployed version 0.5.3 of the Snowflake WebExtension, with improvements to NAT handling.
archive ticket comment |
| 2021-01-26 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 10.5a8, which fixes the bug preventing the use of default bridges.
blog post issue |
| 2021-01-20 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 10.5a7, which has a bug preventing the use of default bridges.
blog post issue issue |
| 2021-01-17 to 2021-01-21 | snowflake Unknown |
Decrease in measured Snowflake users. May have been caused by a drop of NAT-unrestricted proxies.
mailing list thread comment |
| 2021-01-10 to 2021-02-03 | onion |
Large amounts of traffic at directory authorities disrupts consensus, which causes v3 onion services to stop working because of a bug. Tor 0.3.5.13, 0.4.3.8, and 0.4.4.7 have a fix for the bug.
ticket blog post onion service traffic graph Tor blog post Tor Browser blog post status.torproject.org |
| 2021-01-07 | snowflake |
Changed the DNS records for snowflake.freehaven.net and snowflake-broker.bamsoftware.com to be CNAME records for the corresponding torproject.net domains, rather than bamsoftware.com, in order to avoid malware warnings.
ticket |
| 2020-12-17 to 2020-12-20 | snowflake |
DDoS attack on Greenhost, where the Snowflake broker and bridge and onionperf instances are hosted.
2020-12-17 status 2020-12-20 status anti-censorship-team thread |
| 2020-12-05 to 2020-12-09 | meek moat |
An update to an Azure CDN edge server TLS certificate causes an outage of meek and Moat. It is fixed by the release of Tor Browser 10.0.6, which updates the built-in public key pinning of obfs4proxy.
ticket blog post meek graph BridgeDB graph certificate transparency |
| 2020-11-08 to 2020-11-09 | snowflake |
Outage of the snowflake bridge
ticket |
| 2020-10-05 | snowflake |
Deployed version 0.4.2 of the Snowflake WebExtension, with better counting of clients.
archive comment |
| 2020-08-31 | obfs4 |
Shutdown of default obfs4 bridge frosty.
ticket |
| 2020-08-13 | snowflake |
Deployed version 0.4.1 of the Snowflake WebExtension, with NAT type detection in the browser.
archive comment |
| 2020-07-06 | snowflake |
Deployed NAT-aware matching at the Snowflake broker.
comment |
| 2020-06-02 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 10.0a1, the first release with Snowflake for Android.
blog post ticket |
| 2020-05-22 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 9.5a13, the first release with Turbo Tunnel session persistence features for Snowflake.
blog post ticket |
| 2020-04-23 | snowflake |
Redeployed the Snowflake bridge with support for non–Turbo Tunnel clients and KCP–Turbo Tunnel clients, removing support for QUIC–Turbo Tunnel clients.
comment |
| 2020-02-22 | snowflake |
Made the Snowflake bridge stop reporting client IP addresses of 0.0.0.0. This also affects log messages that report how many client connections had an attached IP address.
comment |
| 2020-02-19 | snowflake |
Deployed a Turbo Tunnel–capable Snowflake bridge.
comment |
| 2020-02-18 | snowflake |
Outage of the Snowflake bridge caused by memory exhaustion.
ticket |
| 2019-12-06 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "December 3 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 4974C4F1F6842975999D0774F2636F383312EA2D, geoip6-db-digest 2046D67D7BBE67AFF12E1CEDD9F9083AB5E3DFAC).
commit |
| 2019-11-16 to 2019-11-23 | Iran |
Internet blackout in Iran.
report NTC thread |
| 2019-11-14 | ipv6 snowflake |
Changed DNS to point to the IPv6-enabled Snowflake broker.
comment |
| 2019-11-14 | snowflake |
Deployed webext-0.1.0 of the Snowflake proxy (which uses a new proxy–broker protocol) to snowflake.torproject.org.
comment |
| 2019-11-13 | snowflake |
Released version 0.1.0 of the Snowflake extension for Firefox and Chrome, using a new proxy–broker protocol.
comment |
| 2019-11-13 | snowflake |
Restarted the broker with a new proxy–broker protocol.
comment |
| 2019-11-09 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "November 6 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 967E4D14ADF0C9439C31FB7B666537A0551C1E6A, geoip6-db-digest BD6E89A28801FA447693EDEC6D47ECCA03B8CD20).
commit |
| 2019-10-28 | snowflake |
Version 0.0.13 of the Snowflake extension is released, decreasing the poll frequency to once every 300 s. The standalone proxy-go instances still poll once every 5 s.
comment |
| 2019-10-17 | snowflake |
Pointed snowflake-broker.torproject.net (one of three domain names for the Snowflake broker) to a new broker instance set up with IPv6. Metrics unintentionally start being collected from the new instance, instead of the old instance that was still in use.
ticket ticket |
| 2019-10-02 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "October 1 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 34ABC09019FAB09BA3083B3663EC0B807FC16151, geoip6-db-digest F4D3BEC6294DF7FAEAEE5966CC6706CF91CE9BC4).
commit |
| 2019-10-01 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 9.0a7, the first release that has Snowflake for Windows.
blog post ticket |
| 2019-08-06 to 2019-08-09 |
Experiment to test the accuracy of relays' advertised bandwidth estimation.
description of experiment post announcing start post announcing end advertised bandwidth graph relay flags graph |
|
| 2019-07-27 | snowflake |
The Snowflake proxy hosted at snowflake.torproject.org is updated, changing domains from bamsoftware.com to freehaven.net in order to work around the Google Safe Browsing block.
comment |
| 2019-07-27 | snowflake |
Version 0.0.7 of the Snowflake extension for Chrome is released, changing domains from bamsoftware.com to freehaven.net in order to work around the Google Safe Browsing block.
comment |
| 2019-07-26 | flashproxy snowflake |
Cupcake 2.0 is released, now working with Snowflake rather than flash proxy.
Chrome Web Store page |
| 2019-07-26 | snowflake |
Version 0.0.8 of the Snowflake extension for Firefox is released, changing domains from bamsoftware.com to freehaven.net in order to work around the Google Safe Browsing block.
comment |
| 2019-07-23 | snowflake |
The broker domain name snowflake-broker.bamsoftware.com is blocked by Google Safe Browsing, preventing the Snowflake web browser extension from working.
ticket comment noting decrease in proxies |
| 2019-07-03 | snowflake |
The Snowflake web browser extension for Chrome is published.
comment |
| 2019-07-02 to 2019-08-26 | Iran <OR> Bridges Relays |
Relays in Iran are reported to be unblocked once again, and user numbers recover to about 25% of the maximum they had reached during the previous period of unblocking. They then drop precipitously, and ticket comment comment |
| 2019-06-26 | snowflake |
The Snowflake web browser extension for Firefox is published.
comment |
| 2019-06-20 | obfs4 |
A call to set up new obfs4 bridges is posted to the tor-relays mailing list.
mailing list thread thread continues |
| 2019-06-11 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "June 10 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest A131E1F283F4AD307248B03A70B0413E81ADF2A4, geoip6-db-digest 0EFF3EE1E22927EC9A77BFFAFD703F3A5B32FA79).
commit |
| 2019-05-28 |
Failure of network equipment at site of op-ab OnionPerf instance (equipment now replaced)
onionperf timeouts graph |
|
| 2019-05-22 | fte |
Release of Tor Browser 9.0a1, removes support for FTE.
blog post ticket |
| 2019-05-17 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "May 13 2019 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 35DFDA2D06D2A0467EF37D60A67B438B11952B74, geoip6-db-digest C0193A1D086819353FABBF70AADB15866B7B2525).
commit |
| 2019-05-16 to 2019-06-23 | Iran Relays |
Tor becomes directly accessible in Iran, leading to an explosion in relay users up to about 1.5 million, before being blocked again.
ticket comment about end tor-talk thread Reddit thread comment Reddit thread |
| 2018-07-20 to 2019-05-02 | onion Unknown |
The number of v2 onion services increases from 70k to 100k.
comment |