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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2022-01-10 | Kazakhstan obfs4 |
The Tor Project begins to distribute obfs4 bridges that listen on ports that are reachable in Kazakhstan, despite the ongoing Internet shutdown.
forum post |
| 2022-01-07 | snowflake |
Increased capacity of the mapping to client IP addresses on the snowflake bridge.
issue deployment comment |
| 2022-01-05 to 2022-01-11 | Kazakhstan |
Country-wide Internet shutdown in Kazakhstan. Was preceded by a shutdown of most mobile networks starting 2022-01-04 14:30. Access was restored for a few hours each day.
Cloudflare blog post RIPE Labs blog post NTC thread BBS thread IODA |
| 2022-01-04 | Gambia |
Internet outage in Gambia.
blog post |
| 2021-12-29 | snowflake |
Outage of the snowflake bridge.
comment alert |
| 2021-12-24 | Russia obfs4 |
Another round of obfs4 enumeration and blocking occurs in Russia.
comment |
| 2021-12-22 to present | Finland Relays Unknown |
Increase of relay users in Finland.
tor-talk thread possible explanation graph |
| 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 |
| 2021-12-13 | Russia |
The fraction of networks in Russia blocking Tor, measured by OONI, increases from about 20% to about 50%.
relay graph |
| 2021-12-08 | obfs4 |
Release of Tor Browser 11.0.2, containing a new default obfs4 bridge "deusexmachina".
blog post issue |
| 2021-12-08 | Russia |
The Tor Project web server block is expanded from *.www.torproject.org to *.torproject.org.
record GitLab comment NTC comment zapret-info diff |
| 2021-12-07 | Russia |
The www.torproject.org web server is added to the registry of blocked domain names in Russia, by IP addresses and by hostname *.www.torproject.org.
record GitLab comment NTC comment zapret-info diff OONI report |
| 2021-12-01 to 2021-12-13 | Russia meek |
Blocking of the IP address of the meek-azure front domain in certains ISPs in Russia, part of a wider phenomenon of blocking Tor beginning 2021-12-01.
post about start (2021-12-03) post about end (2021-12-13) post about end (2021-12-15) post about end (2021-12-26) |
| 2021-12-01 to present | Russia |
Blocking of Tor directory authorities, relays, default obfs4 bridges, meek-azure, and Snowflake in some ISPs in Russia. There was a temporary cease of blocking for less than a day starting on 2021-12-08.
NTC thread BBS thread issue blog post OONI report |
| 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 |
| 2021-10-29 | Turkmenistan Relays Unknown |
Further decrease of relay users in Turkmenistan.
comment discussion |
| 2021-10-24 | Turkmenistan snowflake Unknown |
Snowflake users in Turkmenistan drop to zero, possibly as a result of blocking of the broker's domain-fronting channel.
issue comment discussion |
| 2021-10-08 to 2021-11-14 | Netherlands Relays Unknown |
Temporary quintupling of direct users from the Netherlands.
relay graph |