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 |
|---|---|---|
| 2024-05-14 to present |
High load leading to network performance issues.
status.torproject.org forum post |
|
| 2024-05-11 | snowflake |
Loss of about 60,000 WebExtension Snowflake proxies, after the release of version 0.8.2 of the proxy WebExtension, the first release available for Chrome adding a consent prompt that existing users didn't notice.
issue |
| 2024-05-02 |
Release of Orbot for Android 17.2.1-RC-2-tor-0.4.8.7, the first release of Orbot 17 to appear on the Google Play Store. Orbot Snowflake proxies (kindness mode) increase.
release graph of Snowflake proxies |
|
| 2024-04-08 | snowflake |
Loss of about 15,000 WebExtension Snowflake proxies, after the release of version 0.8.0 of the proxy WebExtension, which adds a consent prompt that existing users didn't notice. Version 0.8.0 was released only for Firefox, not for Chrome.
issue |
| 2024-03-29 to 2024-04-24 | snowflake Unknown |
Temporary reductions in users of the snowflake-01 bridge, with simultaneous increases in users of the snowflake-02 bridge.
issue forum post |
| 2024-03-16 to 2024-04-08 | snowflake |
Version 0.7.3 of the Snowflake WebExtension is removed from the Firefox Add-ons store because of a policy change. Version 0.8.0 adds a consent prompt and is re-added to the store.
issue |
| 2024-03-15 | snowflake Unknown |
The Snowflake bridges suddenly recover a large amount of bandwidth, two weeks after the Fastly domain fronting change of 2023-03-01.
mailing list post |
| 2024-03-06 | moat snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0.11, with workaround for the domain fronting change of 2024-03-01.
blog post Snowflake merge request Moat merge request |
| 2024-03-01 | moat snowflake |
Fastly stops supporting domain fronting. This affects Snowflake, Moat, and Connection Assist.
issue pre-announcement in November 2023 forum post bandwidth graphs |
| 2024-02-17 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for system upgrade
comment |
| 2024-02-17 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge in preparation for upgrades
comment |
| 2024-02-09 |
Release of Orbot for Android 17.2.1-RC-1-tor-0.4.8.7.
release |
|
| 2024-01-22 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for configuration and kernel updates
comment |
| 2023-12-21 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0.8. Fixes the problem of pluggable transports not running on Windows 7 and Windows 8, except for Snowflake.
blog post issue merge request |
| 2023-12-19 | Bridges |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0.7. Pluggable transports don't work with Windows 7 and Windows 8.
blog post issue |
| 2023-12-17 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for test of configuration changes
|
| 2023-12-15 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.8 to 0.4.8.10 on the snowflake-01 bridge. Fixes the bug that made user counts by country more imprecise.
comment graph monthly update |
| 2023-12-15 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.8 to 0.4.8.10 on the snowflake-02 bridge. Fixes the bug that made user counts by country more imprecise.
comment |
| 2023-12-08 |
Release of tor 0.4.8.10. Fixes TROVE-2023-007 affecting exit relays with Conflux. Fixes the bug that caused incorrect counting of pluggable transport users.
announcement |
|
| 2023-11-21 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-02 bridge for a performance enhancement.
comment |
| 2023-11-21 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-01 bridge for a performance enhancement.
comment |
| 2023-11-16 | Relays |
Removal of about 1,000 "ATOR" relays.
blog post blog post graph |
| 2023-11-07 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-02 bridge for a performance enhancement. Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.6 to 0.4.8.8.
comment |
| 2023-10-20 | snowflake |
Restart of snowflake-01 bridge for Debian 11.8 upgrade. Upgraded tor from 0.4.8.6 to 0.4.8.7.
comment |
| 2023-10-12 |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0. First stable release with Conflux.
blog post tor-relays post |
|
| 2023-10-05 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot 17.1.0-RC-2-tor.0.4.7.14, again changing the domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
release commit |
| 2023-10-04 | snowflake Unknown |
The snowflake-02 bridge suddenly recovers a large amount of bandwidth, after two weeks of low usage following the domain front change of 2023-09-20.
mailing list post |
| 2023-10-03 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.7.13 to 0.4.8.6 on the snowflake-01 bridge. As with the upgrade on snowflake-02 on 2023-09-24, this causes the reporting of spurious OR protocol users.
comment mailing list post comment monthly update |
| 2023-09-28 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot 17.1.0-RC-1-tor.0.4.7.14, with an alternative domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
release commit |
| 2023-09-26 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 12.5.5, with an alternative domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
blog post merge request |
| 2023-09-24 | snowflake |
Upgraded tor from 0.4.7.13 to 0.4.8.6 on the snowflake-02 bridge. As the result of an apparent bug, the bridge starts reporting a number of OR protocol users about equal to the number of Snowflake users.
mailing list post about upgrade mailing list post about metrics problems core Tor issue metrics issue |
| 2023-09-24 | snowflake |
Release of Tor Browser 13.0a5, with an alternative domain front to attempt to work around Snowflake connection problems.
blog post merge request |
| 2023-09-21 | snowflake Unknown |
The snowflake-01 bridge suddenly recovers a large amount of bandwidth, about 24 hours after the domain front change of 2023-09-20 started to lower the number of users.
mailing list post |
| 2023-09-20 | moat snowflake |
The front domain used by Snowflake, Moat, and Connection Assist starts sometimes resolving to a different CDN, which makes these services stop working for some users. The snowflake-01 bridge drops to about half its normal number of users; the snowflake-02 bridge drops almost to zero. There would later be sudden partial recoveries of usage on snowflake-01 at 2023-09-21 13:10:00 and snowflake-02 at 2023-10-04 11:40:00.
forum post about Snowflake forum post about Moat and Connection Assist |
| 2023-08-27 to 2023-08-30 | snowflake |
Outage of the snowflake-02 bridge caused by a temporary network disconnection at the network host. Client polls at the broker increase and traffic is diverted to snowflake-01.
mailing list post article status page |
| 2023-08-23 to 2023-12-08 | Bridges |
A bug in tor 0.4.8.4 causes misattribution of about half of pluggable transport users to the plain Tor protocol in bridges that upgrade to this version. The bug is fixed in tor 0.4.8.10.
issue issue merge request |
| 2023-08-23 |
Release of tor 0.4.8.4, with new Conflux and anti-DoS proof-of-work features.
announcement |
|
| 2023-07-18 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-server on the snowflake-02 bridge with num-turbotunnel=8.
comment |
| 2023-07-18 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-server on the snowflake-01 bridge with num-turbotunnel=8.
comment |
| 2023-07-18 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-server on the snowflake-01 bridge with num-turbotunnel=1.
comment |
| 2023-07-01 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge after testing performance optimizations.
comment |
| 2023-06-30 |
The number of allowed relays per IP address (AuthDirMaxServersPerAddr) is increased from 2 to 8.
announcement issue |
|
| 2023-06-29 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge to test an optimization.
comment |
| 2023-06-29 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge to test an optimization.
comment |
| 2023-06-29 | webtunnel |
Announcement of WebTunnel availability.
announcement |
| 2023-06-29 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge to test an optimization.
comment |
| 2023-06-28 | snowflake |
Restarted snowflake-01 bridge for a profiling change.
comment |
| 2023-06-12 to 2024-05-06 | Germany Relays Unknown |
Increase in relay users from Germany.
issue graph forum thread |
| 2023-06-01 | conjure |
Announcement of Conjure availability.
announcement BBS thread |
| 2023-05-31 | snowflake |
Release of Orbot 17.1.0-BETA-2-tor.0.4.7.11.
release |
| 2023-05-22 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-01 bridge for an upgrade.
comment |
| 2023-05-21 | snowflake |
Restarted the snowflake-02 bridge for an upgrade.
comment |
| 2023-01-20 to present | webstats Unknown |
Tor Browser update pings drop temporarily. A similar effect is present in other years.
graph issue |
| 2021-06-10 to present |
Experiment to test latencies between relays.
status.torproject.org post announcing start |
|
| 2018-09-26 to present | fte |
Outage of default FTE bridge 128.105.214.162:8080.
comment |
| 2018-09-26 to present | fte |
Outage of default FTE bridge 128.105.214.163:8080.
comment |
| 2018-01-05 to present |
Outage of the op-hk OnionPerf instance.
op-hk graph |
|
| 2017-12-04 to present |
DDoS attack creates load on the network.
tor-relays thread relay graph summary post ticket |
|
| 2017-02-10 to present | OR exit |
Measurement error from bandwidth authority causes decrease in measured bandwidth in Europe.
mailing list post |