Hi folks,

If you are comfortable compiling Tor from git, and you want to help investigate what fraction of Tor network load comes from hidden service use, I have a shiny new git branch called hs-stats that will collect per-thirty-minute statistics about number of circuits and number of cells your relay sees that have to do with exiting, with hidden services, with circuits where you're not the final hop, and a fourth none-of-the-above category.

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13192

It skips all circuits and cells that come from non-relays, which should help make sure the stats aren't useful for hurting anonymity.

It doesn't automatically send the output anywhere -- it just writes it to its notice-level log for now. So you'll need to either send me the log lines, or add them to the trac ticket like I did here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13192#comment:2

Preliminary results are that load from hidden services is actually a tiny fraction of overall load.

A bonus use from these statistics would be to learn what fraction of load comes from exit connections vs middle connections, for relays with various consensus flags.

And of course, it's possible there are bugs in how I'm doing the counting. I'll keep investigating to make sure I'm doing it right.

Thanks! --Roger