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 directly-connecting clients; that is, it excludes clients connecting via bridges. These estimates are derived from the number of directory requests counted on directory authorities and mirrors. Relays resolve client IP addresses to country codes, so that graphs are available for most countries. Furthermore, it is possible to display indications of censorship events as obtained from an anomaly-based censorship-detection system (for more details, see this technical report). 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2018-04-25 to 2018-07-02 | onion Unknown |
The number of v2 onion services increases from 70k to 120k.
ticket |
| 2018-04-16 | snowflake |
Moved the Snowflake broker from App Engine to a standalone server.
comment |
| 2018-04-13 | snowflake |
Snowflake client registrations (based on domain fronting) stop working, because of a Google infrastructure change that stops domain fronting from working. The time of the change is between 2018-04-13 14:00:00 and 2018-04-13 18:00:00, based on when the bandwidth graph of the Snowflake bridge 5481936581E23D2D178105D44DB6915AB06BFB7F went to zero.
ticket |
| 2018-04-05 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "April 3 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 8A53650327E8D30E971DC90F564BA9BD1A513F19, geoip6-db-digest 698852511F6BC27DFFC115805044C71FDCCF70AF).
commit |
| 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 |
| 2018-04-02 | snowflake |
Reinstated periodic restarts of the fallback snowflake proxies.
comment |
| 2018-03-27 | snowflake |
Restarted the fallback snowflake proxies with no limit on memory.
comment |
| 2018-03-26 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 8.0a5. Improves snowflake client performance.
blog post ticket |
| 2018-03-23 | snowflake |
Restarted the fallback snowflake proxies with a limit on resident memory (ulimit -m) rather than virtual memory (ulimit -v).
comment comment |
| 2018-03-22 | snowflake |
Provisionally increased memory limits of the fallback snowflake proxies to 400 MB, 800 MB, or unlimited.
comment |
| 2018-03-22 | snowflake |
Increased memory limit of the fallback snowflake proxies from 200 MB to 400 MB.
comment comment |
| 2018-03-22 | snowflake |
Disabled periodic restarts of the fallback snowflake proxies; gave them a memory limit of 200 MB.
comment |
| 2018-03-16 | snowflake |
Deployed another attempt to fix frequent crashes of the fallback snowflake proxies.
comment |
| 2018-03-14 | snowflake |
Deployed an attempt to fix frequent crashes of the fallback snowflake proxies.
comment commit |
| 2018-03-12 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "March 8 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 0FD75C42A32E82100361BD367CB13862806E6A13, geoip6-db-digest 5AFA101C4A6AD4289CEE4575943D6BA851606245).
commit |
| 2018-03-05 to 2018-03-08 | Germany <OR> Relays Unknown |
Steady drop in the number of relay users in Germany, from 1.5M to 650k. (Drop coincides with the release of tor 0.3.2.10, 0.3.1.10, and 0.2.9.15, which offer better resistance against DoS attacks; as well as improvements in speed for downloads from onions graph; see this graph as well. More datapoints: DDoS of the network happened around the time that saw an increase in the number of relay users in Germany, see entry above or graph)
graph ticket |
| 2018-03-03 |
Release of tor 0.3.2.10, 0.3.1.10, and 0.2.9.15, which offer better resistance against DoS attacks.
blog post ticket |
|
| 2018-02-27 to 2018-03-02 |
Less than 3 bandwidth authorities are available.
tor-relays |
|
| 2018-02-12 | Relays |
Tor 0.3.3.2-alpha reaches deb.torproject.org repositories
|
| 2018-02-11 | Relays |
Tor 0.3.3.2-alpha reaches FreeBSD repositories
|
| 2018-02-10 | Relays |
Tor 0.3.3.2-alpha is released (containing important denial-of-service migitations for relays)
blog |
| 2018-02-08 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "February 7 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest FF83AD73DE7672C77EDF8888F4B241642C7C90F7, geoip6-db-digest B1CDBFEB7C88F82EF3B5289CAFEED1321FA4693F).
commit |
| 2018-01-24 to present | webstats |
Tor Browser update pings roughly halve, again. The beginning corresponds with the release of Tor Browser 7.5; however unlike with Tor Browser 6.5.2, there was no change to app.update.url this time.
ticket thread |
| 2018-01-23 | obfs4 |
Tor Browser 7.5 is released. It adds the default obfs4 bridge noisetor01:46089.
blog post |
| 2018-01-20 | Relays |
Some more directory authorities upgrade to 0.3.2.9 which enforces new requirements for the exit flag. ~50 relays lose the exit flag
tor-relays post |
| 2018-01-18 to 2018-02-24 | snowflake |
Outage of Snowflake broker caused by the disabling of the Let's Encrypt TLS-SNI-01 challenge.
ticket graph |
| 2018-01-16 |
Tor 0.3.2.9 reaches deb.torproject.org.
relay versions graph |
|
| 2018-01-08 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "January 5 2018 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest ACE2AF82816B9D3F58FC9C79A41B4506D6DAD713, geoip6-db-digest 387B3F555F1E054F0F9971C726F49848C5B5CF8B).
commit |
| 2018-01-05 to present |
Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance.
op-hk graph |
|
| 2017-12-21 |
Release of tor 0.3.2.8-rc, intended to fix the KIST bug that enabled a DoS on relays by running them out of memory.
announcement ticket |
|
| 2017-12-20 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "December 6 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 1D486694A710145631B295CC39ECC5682F75858C, geoip6-db-digest F33231CAC761A71F7C19273DB1E11CEE01E2D982).
commit |
| 2017-12-16 to 2017-12-17 | Bridges Unknown |
Drop in the number of measured bridges.
graph mailing list post |
| 2017-12-12 to 2018-01-18 | meek |
Outage of the meek.bamsoftware.com (unthrottled for public use), meek.bamsoftware.com:7443 (former meek-azure, now unused), and gaeuploader.meek.bamsoftware.com (used by GAEuploader) bridges.
|
| 2017-12-10 to 2018-02-01 | Germany <OR> Relays Unknown |
Further, slow increase of relay users in Germany, from 500k to over 1.5M.
graph Reddit thread ticket |
| 2017-12-09 | <OR> ipv6 Relays |
Release of Tor Browser 7.0.11, containing tor 0.3.1.9, which adds an IPv6 address for the bridge authority bastet.
blog post |
| 2017-12-09 | <OR> ipv6 Relays |
Release of Tor Browser 7.5a9, containing tor 0.3.2.6-alpha, which adds an IPv6 address for the bridge authority bastet.
blog post |
| 2017-12-08 to 2017-12-11 | Bridges |
The bridge authority was down for unknown reasons.
graph mailing list post |
| 2017-12-04 to present |
DDoS attack creates load on the network.
tor-relays thread relay graph summary post ticket |
|
| 2017-12-01 | <OR> ipv6 Relays |
Release of tor 0.2.8.17, 0.2.9.14, 0.3.0.13, 0.3.1.9, and 0.3.2.6-alpha, which add an IPv6 address for the bridge authority bastet.
ticket blog post |
| 2017-11-15 | <OR> Relays |
Release of Tor Browser 7.5a8, containing tor 0.3.2.4-alpha, which adds a new directory authority bastet, and changes the IP address of the directory authority Longclaw.
blog post |
| 2017-11-15 | meek |
Outage of meek-amazon bridge.
ticket |
| 2017-11-14 | <OR> Relays |
Release of Tor Browser 7.0.10, containing tor 0.3.1.8, which adds a new directory authority bastet, and changes the IP address of the directory authority Longclaw.
blog post |
| 2017-11-11 to 2017-11-12 |
Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance.
op-hk graph |
|
| 2017-11-10 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "November 6 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest E3C910F3B2A6C916C7BE33A943091EF57048B72C, geoip6-db-digest E8BD5B2E6554C27F718F1222667C09680D75F799).
commit |
| 2017-11-01 | meek |
Turned off the old meek-amazon CDN endpoint d2zfqthxsdq309.cloudfront.net.
mailing list post |
| 2017-10-25 | <OR> Relays |
Release of tor 0.2.5.15, 0.2.8.16, 0.2.9.13, 0.3.0.12, and 0.3.1.8, which add a new directory authority bastet, and change the IP address of the directory authority Longclaw.
blog post Bastet blog post bastet ticket Longclaw ticket |
| 2017-10-14 | snowflake |
Activated client IP address statistics on the Snowflake server and standalone proxies.
comment |
| 2017-10-05 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "October 4 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 3A59213E5CFEE380F544B72DC1105366C6BD1CDE, geoip6-db-digest 1B8C975E5C62CF0FB5B4E598AE27B7189952BB09).
commit |
| 2017-10-04 | fte |
Permanent hardware failure of default FTE bridge 128.105.214.161:8080.
comment |
| 2017-09-26 to 2017-10-22 | Germany <OR> Relays Unknown |
Steady increase of relay users in Germany, from 180k to around 500k. It would increase further starting 2017-12-10.
de graph Reddit thread ticket |
| 2017-09-15 to 2017-10-12 |
Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance. Reported timeouts on the tor network increased, download speed improved.
mailing list post torperf graph torperf-failures graph op-hk graph |
|
| 2017-09-15 to 2017-09-16 | Bridges |
The bridge authority was down due to an issue with its offline master key.
graph mailing list post |
| 2017-09-14 to 2017-09-16 | Bridges |
Outage of the bridge authority Bifroest.
|
| 2017-09-07 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "September 6 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 0CE9EA8882EDED265451C36B49AE7BBB06A11C16, geoip6-db-digest C4573496EBD1CC335843067107DA49E482568FF6).
commit |
| 2017-09-02 to 2017-09-21 | obfs4 Unknown |
About a 35% increase in obfs4 users before returning to normal. Happened in many countries. Other transports do not have it.
graph |
| 2017-09-01 to 2017-09-20 | obfs4 |
A flood of over 4,000 obfs4 bridges nicknamed "Machiavelli".
graph of number of bridges tor-relays post metrics-team thread tweet |
| 2017-08-14 to 2017-08-15 | Bridges |
Outage of the bridge authority Bifroest.
mailing list post mailing list post graph |
| 2017-08-14 | ipv6 obfs4 Unknown |
Jump in IPv6 users of the Lisbeth default obfs4 bridge.
comment |
| 2017-08-10 to 2017-08-11 |
Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance. Reported timeouts on the tor network increased, download speed improved.
torperf graph torperf-failures graph op-hk graph |
|
| 2017-08-08 | snowflake |
Tor Browser 7.5a4 released, including Snowflake for macOS.
blog post |
| 2017-08-03 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "August 3 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 75AABD32582AC554AF252DDC7BBBABE7C6F28B28, geoip6-db-digest A52EFFEF8CF6F3CAA8EBD34961361544E959FAE1).
commit |
| 2017-07-31 to 2017-08-28 | Unknown |
Directory authorities using 2× bandwidth.
mailing list post for start mailing list post for end post suggesting link to nl, ro, lt, sc increases |
| 2017-07-29 to 2017-08-17 | meek |
Outage of meek-amazon bridge, caused by an expired certificate.
Relay Search expired certificate new certificate |
| 2017-04-14 to 2017-08-20 | <OR> |
Directory authority maatuska's bwscanner stops operating, leading to a drop in traffic on some relays.
tor-consensus-health post about start tor-consensus-health post about end tor-dev thread analysis |