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.
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 |
---|---|---|
2018-07-20 to 2019-05-02 | onion Unknown |
The number of v2 onion services increases from 70k to 100k.
comment |
2018-07-15 | snowflake |
Made the Snowflake bridge report to the new Serge bridge authority.
comment |
2018-07-14 | Bridges |
Release of Tor 0.2.9.16, 0.3.2.11, 0.3.3.9, and 0.3.4.5-rc. Switches bridge authority from Bifroest to Serge. The number of bridges begins counting up from zero as bridges are upgraded. The estimated number of bridge users remained unavailable until 2018-07-21 because of the discontinuity.
announcement ticket blog post number of bridges graph |
2018-07-14 to 2018-07-25 | Iraq |
Protests, Internet shutdowns, and social media blocks in Iraq.
relay graph NetBlocks post NRT article about end Psiphon users |
2018-07-13 | Bridges |
The replacement bridge authority Serge begins publishing bridge descriptors.
ticket ticket number of bridges graph |
2018-07-06 | Bridges |
The bridge authority Bifroest stops publishing bridge descriptors. Bridge stats are unavailable until 2018-07-13 and the introduction of a new bridge authority.
ticket ticket mailing list post number of bridges graph |
2018-07-06 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "July 3 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest CFFD7B0544879150A31F966E83DBB7DDDFA16F49 , geoip6-db-digest B25710F60CB23F0C76F58AFB0A26A26ACB701BB2 ).
commit |
2018-07-04 to 2018-07-06 | snowflake |
Outage of the Snowflake bridge, caused by a full disk.
ticket |
2018-07-01 to present | Uganda |
A social media tax takes effect in Uganda. The government pressures ISPs to block VPNs.
relay graph bridge graph BBC article AllAfrica article OONI report |
2018-06-27 | meek |
Release of Tor Browser 8.0a9 with non-working meek.
blog post ticket |
2018-06-24 to 2018-07-06 | snowflake |
Metrics for Snowflake are missing, for unknown reasons. The gap is nearly contemporaneous with the gap the measurements for all transports/bridges caused by Bifroest–Serge bridge authority switchover, but starts about 2 weeks earlier in Snowflake's case.
ticket |
2018-06-20 to present | Venezuela |
Venezuela's largest ISP, CANTV, blocks direct access to Tor and the IP addresses of default bridges. meek and non-default bridges are reported to work.
ticket mailing list post Access Now report |
2018-06-11 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "June 7 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 93112125248AD2C11A2531B934FD4AC03999738D , geoip6-db-digest BFD2B453F2D9DC875B7B0C464A185E6C3202534F ).
commit |
2018-06-10 to 2018-07-11 | Turkey Relays Unknown |
Jump of relay users in Turkey, from 5k to about 30k. The timing of the beginning corresponds to the release of Tor Browser 7.5.5 and 8.0a8.
relay graph bridge graph comment |
2018-06-10 | meek |
Release of Tor Browser 8.0a8, removes meek-amazon option.
blog post |
2018-06-09 | meek |
Release of Tor Browser 7.5.5, removes meek-amazon option.
blog post |
2018-05-23 to 2018-07-01 | Bridges Unknown |
Sharp increase in bridge users in many unrelated countries, affecting even the global aggregate. Relay users unaffected. The graphs reach a peak around 2018-06-07 and then begin falling again. An incomplete sampling of affected countries: Bangladesh Chile Indonesia Morocco Venezuela.
relay graph bridge graph |
2018-05-22 to 2018-06-08 | Iraq obfs4 Unknown |
Increase in obfs4 users in Iraq, followed by a slow decrease. No matching change in relay users or other transports.
bridge graph |
2018-05-17 | Bridges |
Release of tor 0.3.4.1-alpha. Has a bug that makes idle bridges unuseful.
ticket ticket |
2018-05-15 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "May 1 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 765D2F123DDA7DAEA9C9263975E2B4BAFBD2B908 , geoip6-db-digest 2AA568CC898BF9924FBACEA26946AA7ED10E7D87 ).
commit |
2018-05-14 | meek |
Disabled the d2cly7j4zqgua7.cloudfront.net CDN endpoint for meek-amazon.
Tor Browser ticket Orbot ticket |
2018-05-09 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 8.0a7, which changes the default Snowflake rendezvous to use an Azure domain front, instead of the Google one that had been non-functional since 2018-04-13.
blog post ticket |
2018-05-08 | meek |
The meek-amazon bridge imposes a rate limit of 1 MB/s.
|
2018-05-08 | Russia |
Russia unblocks about 3.7 million IP addresses belonging to Google and Digital Ocean.
Roskomnadzor press release monitoring page |
2018-04-30 to present | Iran |
Iranian ISPs block Telegram.
ticket article relay graph bridge graph Psiphon users |
2018-04-28 | Russia |
Russia unblocks about 3 million IP addresses belonging to Amazon and OVH.
Roskomnadzor press release monitoring page |
2018-04-25 to 2018-07-02 | onion Unknown |
The number of v2 onion services increases from 70k to 120k.
ticket |
2018-04-16 to 2018-05-08 | Russia |
Russia tries to block Telegram; blocks about 18 million IP addresses including some belonging to Amazon and Google cloud services.
article relay graph bridge graph |
2018-04-16 | snowflake |
Moved the Snowflake broker from App Engine to a standalone server.
comment |
2018-04-02 to 2018-04-18 | snowflake |
Accidentally misconfigured the 3 proxy-go instances that were meant to point to the new standalone broker so that they pointed to the old App Engine broker.
start end |
2017-03-01 to 2018-11-12 | United Arab Emirates <OR> Relays Unknown |
Another increase in relay users, slower and more sustained than the previous one.
graph ticket about end |
2015-12-31 to 2020-06-04 | Mexico |
The Telmex ISP in Mexico blocks seven directory authorities.
mailing list post article |
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This material is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-0959138. Any opinions, finding, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. "Tor" and the "Onion Logo" are registered trademarks of The Tor Project, Inc.. Data on this site is freely available under a CC0 no copyright declaration: To the extent possible under law, the Tor Project has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights in the data. Graphs are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.