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 distinguish connecting clients by transport protocol, which may include pluggable transports, so that graphs are available for different transports. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2016-10-30 | meek |
Increased the rate limit on the meek-amazon bridge to 3.0 MB/s, from 1.0 MB/s.
|
| 2016-10-28 | meek |
Decreased the rate limit on the meek-amazon bridge to 1.0 MB/s, from 3.0 MB/s.
|
| 2016-10-25 to present | Egypt <OR> Relays |
Egypt blocks Tor directory authorities and public relays by TCP RST. Bridges work.
OONI report |
| 2016-10-19 to 2016-11-10 | meek |
Large decrease in meek users, perhaps caused by problems in Orbot 15.0.2 BETA 1 that were fixed in Orbot 15.2.0 RC8.
ticket initial email followup email Orbot mail |
| 2016-10-09 to 2016-10-25 | Israel <OR> Relays Unknown |
Direct users fluctuate wildly in Israel. Bridge users not affected.
graph |
| 2016-10-08 to 2016-10-09 | Turkey |
Turkey blocks storage services including Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and GitHub. Most (all?) of the blocks were rescinded the next day.
blocking article unblocking tweet unblocking article |
| 2016-10-08 | Ethiopia |
Ethiopia declares a state of emergency and implements network blocks.
OONI report |
| 2016-10-05 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "October 4 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest C14DF5AE94101562DEACDD296278B0EFA3EA26E5, geoip6-db-digest A88A828020A558D37F97CF683D4521270F0511A2).
commit |
| 2016-10-02 to 2016-10-03 | Egypt <OR> Relays |
Reports that direct connections from Egypt are blocked; bridges are required. Maybe be the same as the block beginning 2016-10-25.
OONI report |
| 2016-09-28 | meek |
Rate limit on the meek-amazon bridge returns to 3.0 MB/s, having been set to about 1.0 MB/s for some time, cause uncertain.
|
| 2016-09-24 | obfs3 |
Default obfs3 bridge LeifEricson upgrades and begins reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest. This is the last obfs3 bridge that hadn't upgraded.
|
| 2016-09-24 | obfs4 |
Default obfs4 bridge LeifEricson upgrades and begins reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest. This is the last obfs4 bridge that hadn't upgraded.
|
| 2016-09-23 to 2016-11-28 | obfs3 |
Outage of default obfs3 bridges "Unnamed" and "Unnamed" (fingerprint AF9F66B7B04F8FF6F32D455F05135250A16543C9). (Start date not known for sure, though it must have been after 2016-09-23; discussed in non-archived tor-team email.)
|
| 2016-09-23 | obfs3 |
Default obfs3 bridges ndnop0 and ndnop2 upgrade and begin reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest.
post on bridges not reporting statistics |
| 2016-09-23 | obfs3 |
Default obfs3 bridges "Unnamed" and "Unnamed" (fingerprint AF9F66B7B04F8FF6F32D455F05135250A16543C9) upgrade and begin reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest.
|
| 2016-09-23 | obfs4 |
Default obfs3 bridges ndnop3 and ndnop5 upgrade and begin reporting statistics to the new bridge authority Bifroest.
post on bridges not reporting statistics |
| 2016-09-20 | meek |
macOS 10.12 (Sierra) is released, breaking some programs that are built with Go <1.7, including the meek-client that comes with Tor Browser. (See 2016-11-15 unbreaking event.)
ticket |
| 2016-09-07 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "September 6 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 72F8AD2CD7C97D173AD53276366EAD32B13E0A50, geoip6-db-digest B6427DEAD2291FBF8311A2233AF4960BF4009713).
commit |
| 2016-09-04 | Iran <OR> |
Iran intensifies the blocking begun on 2016-08-20, getting most of the remaining direct users. There is interference in the graphs from the bridge authority changeover on 2016-09-02, but because the changeover would not have affected counts of ''direct'' users, it may be a coincidence.
ticket |
| 2016-09-02 | Bridges |
The former bridge authority Tonga shuts down. Bridges that have not updated to tor 0.2.8.7 or 0.2.9.2-alpha (which include all 5 default obfs3 bridges and 3/16 default obfs4 bridges) stop reporting statistics.
shutdown notice blog post loss of reporting bridges |
| 2016-08-31 | Bridges |
CollecTor begins publishing bridge stats from the new bridge authority Bifroest.
post |
| 2016-08-24 | Bridges |
tor 0.2.8.7 and 0.2.9.2-alpha are released, changing the bridge authority from Tonga to Bifroest.
0.2.8.7 announcement |
| 2016-08-24 | China <OR> Unknown |
Large decrease in users in China.
relay bridge |
| 2016-08-20 | Iran <OR> |
Iran somehow blocks most direct Tor connections. May also affect bridge users, but it's hard to tell because there were few vanilla bridge users anyway.
ticket |
| 2016-08-18 to 2016-08-29 | Mali Unknown |
Sudden increase of direct and bridge users in Mali.
relay graph bridge graph |
| 2016-08-18 | meek |
Changed the meek-amazon CDN price class from "All" to "Use Only US, Canada and Europe."
|
| 2016-08-12 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "August 2 2016 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 9DD185BEC4F482DDD20A0221B3DD3F40175F0123, geoip6-db-digest B1C1B6BDC9627E3D87530A2C70578AC69C20C5C6).
commit |
| 2016-07-21 to 2017-03-03 | Brazil meek Unknown |
Sustained increase in meek users in Brazil. Locals believe that they are not actual users, rather bots or something like that. End date coincides with shutdown of meek-azure before migration. Would pick up again 2017-06-07.
graph |
| 2015-12-31 to 2020-06-04 | Mexico |
The Telmex ISP in Mexico blocks seven directory authorities.
mailing list post article |