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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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 |
| 2017-07-07 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "July 4 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 3D04F191098640F2E03B4D5F7800088D14B7EC30, geoip6-db-digest A3649B9E909C59942FB3D8F874AB4BEA36E8BEC1).
commit |
| 2017-07-04 to 2017-07-21 | obfs4 |
Outage of default obfs4 bridge frosty.
mailing list post |
| 2017-07-04 to 2017-07-21 | obfs4 |
Outage of default obfs4 bridge dragon.
mailing list post |
| 2017-07-02 |
deb.torproject.org upgrades from tor 0.2.9 to tor 0.3.0
relay versions graph tweet |
|
| 2017-06-26 to 2017-07-02 | obfs4 |
Outage of default obfs4 bridge dragon.
mailing list post |
| 2017-06-26 to 2017-07-03 | obfs4 |
Outage of default obfs4 bridge frosty.
mailing list post |
| 2017-06-20 | meek |
Outage of meek-azure bridge.
start end |
| 2017-06-19 to 2017-06-23 | obfs4 |
Outage of default obfs4 bridge dragon.
mailing list post |
| 2017-06-18 to 2017-06-23 | obfs4 |
Outage of default obfs4 bridge frosty.
mailing list post |
| 2017-06-12 | obfs4 |
Increased the file descriptor limit on default obfs4 bridges ndnop3 and ndnop5 from 4096 to 32768. They had been failing bootstrap attempts from a test location in the U.S. about 40% of the time.
graph showing failed connections |
| 2017-06-09 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "June 8 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest AFD609025B66305AD9FA8E0B15AF4F2BC82271F1, geoip6-db-digest A69FD14ACE46EE695F589ACE0EB7B915285B51B4).
commit |
| 2017-06-07 | ipv6 obfs4 |
Tor Browser 7.0 released. Adds an IPv6 address for default obfs4 bridge Lisbeth. Adds new default obfs4 bridges frosty and dragon.
blog post IPv6 ticket frosty and dragon ticket |
| 2017-05-25 | obfs4 |
Set AssumeReachable 1 on the default obfs4 bridges cymrubridge31 and cymrubridge33 in an attempt to make them publish statistics.
mailing list post |
| 2017-05-23 to 2017-06-13 | obfs4 |
Default obfs4 bridge LeifEricson rejects connections due to a broken firewall forwarding rule. This didn't affect the bridges "real" obfs4 port, but it did affect the port at that time configured in Tor Browser.
|
| 2017-05-08 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "May 2 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest B2E5105287668771E34A66F90B34982D419727EF, geoip6-db-digest 8DA8AC3C8158CBFDF7DB53BBF73338246872371A).
commit |
| 2017-05-06 | snowflake |
Set AssumeReachable 1 on the Snowflake bridge 2B280B23E1107BB62ABFC40DDCC8824814F80A72 in an attempt to make it start publishing statistics.
mailing list post |
| 2017-04-30 | meek |
The meek-amazon bridge upgrades to meek-server 0.27.
|
| 2017-04-20 | meek obfs4 scramblesuit |
Tor Browser 7.0a3 is released. It changes the app.update.url. It removes the last remaining scramblesuit bridge. It changes the meek-amazon backend. It adds the new default obfs4 bridges cymrubridge31:80 and cymrubridge33:80.
blog post |
| 2017-04-19 | meek obfs4 |
Tor Browser 6.5.2 is released. It changes the app.update.url. It changes the meek-amazon backend. It adds the new default obfs4 bridges cymrubridge31:80 and cymrubridge33:80.
blog post comment about app.update.url |
| 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 |
| 2017-04-06 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "April 4 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 0F3D4A456E5078CC9E49398ADCB04C40EA49B793, geoip6-db-digest 04F41F05FA167EF6EEE3FE953404AB0BCCD33008).
commit |
| 2017-03-22 | meek |
Orbot 15.4.0 beta-2 multi is released, containing the new meek-azure CDN configuration.
mailing list post commit |
| 2017-03-08 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "March 7 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 63921843E3AAA632088D189D877F836A373CD40D, geoip6-db-digest 2B93B9C6679BB09E1746F212A6DCDC6E710F5F52).
commit |
| 2017-03-07 | meek scramblesuit |
Tor Browser 6.5.1 is released, containing the new meek-azure CDN configuration, and removing the last remaining scramblesuit bridge.
blog post meek ticket scramblesuit ticket |
| 2017-03-03 | meek |
Stopped the (unused) meek-azure CDN endpoint meek-reflect.azureedge.net.
mailing list post |
| 2017-03-03 | meek |
Stopped the meek-azure CDN endpoint az786092.vo.msecnd.net.
mailing list post |
| 2017-03-03 | meek |
Stopped the meek-azure CDN endpoint az668014.vo.msecnd.net.
mailing list post |
| 2017-02-12 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "February 8 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest C0C6099CE335916862978F77756C0B42521A74B2, geoip6-db-digest A54B14B9D47584E010F763D3EAE23C4726F4A8D5).
commit |
| 2017-02-10 to present | <OR> exit |
Measurement error from bandwidth authority causes decrease in measured bandwidth in Europe.
mailing list post |
| 2017-01-25 to 2017-04-05 | webstats |
Tor Browser update pings roughly halve. The beginning corresponds with the release of Tor Browser 6.5.2, which changed the app.update.url. The end doesn't correspond to any release.
ticket |
| 2017-01-24 |
Tor Browser 6.5 is released. It changes the app.update.url, which causes an apparent drop in update pings.
blog post graph ticket comment about app.update.url |
|
| 2017-01-24 | snowflake |
Tor Browser 7.0a1 released, including Snowflake for GNU/Linux only.
blog post |
| 2017-01-22 | meek |
1.0-beta release of GAEuploader, a tool that automates the setting up of meek.
mailing list post |
| 2017-01-09 | meek |
Decreased the rate limit on the meek-azure bridge to 2.0 MB/s, from 3.0 MB/s.
|
| 2017-01-04 | ipv4 ipv6 |
geoip and geoip6 databases updated to "January 4 2017 Maxmind GeoLite2 Country" (geoip-db-digest 672C29A4FA9BF81DE97CFE128741445E2BDE8097, geoip6-db-digest 81F380639A8E1000539204949A363FD3BFAFBA74).
commit |