[tor-relays] the obfsproxy bundle, and decrease in number of users to my bridges

Viking God vikinggod at gmx.com
Thu Mar 27 17:05:40 UTC 2014


A repost, as I didn't get any answers when I posted in another thread:

Where can I download an obfsproxy bridge bundle nowadays? It seams to
have disappeared. I use both win and linux(but not debian/ubuntu).

I have found dual information pages about setting up obfsproxy+tor in
Debian/Ubuntu Here:
https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-instructions.html.en
And here:
https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-debian-instructions.html.en

Why dual instructions for Debian/Ubuntu?
But no instructions for other OS:es, and no direct download links with
compiled packages/programs here:
https://www.torproject.org/dist/

How do you suppose that people will be able to help setting up obfsproxy
bridges, when there isn't any way to get instructions or packages/programs?

Previously I ran an obfsproxy bridge and saw the amount of traffic get
lower and lower, at the end it was only about 2-10 MB of traffic per
week and with very few users. Some weeks I go no users so I stopped
wasting my electricity and stopped running the obfs-bridge. But now I
would like to try again after a couple of months pause. I'm interested
to see if the Internet-blocking in Turkey might have caused some more
traffic.

I also used to run a normal bridge up until a couple of weeks ago but
saw the traffic get as low as around 50MB per week, while normally I
used to get around 1-2GB per week so I shut it down too. I asked myself:
"What's the point of wasting energy and at the same time making it
easier to hack into my network, when I'm not even helping the world?".
So I shut it down too.

Perhaps some changes in the tor network after the release of Tor 0.2.4
has reduced the number of bridge and obfsproxy users globally? Due to
the constant flow of bugs in the different tor-related software and
bundles, my first guess is that the problem is with changes in Tor plus
related software. A look at the bug tracker makes me wonder if there are
more things in the Tor related software that do work or don't work???
But perhaps more bridges are blocked nowadays by the filters that
various countries apply to the Internet?
Or perhaps less countries block their Internet users so less people need
to use bridges?
Or perhaps a lot of new bridge operators have arisen, making every
bridge receive less traffic?
My ISP isn't known for blocking anything and I've never heard of any
government blocking of Tor in the EU, so the problem is probably not
with my ISP nor the EU.
I have always been running the latest stable release of the bundles, so
It doesn't have anything to do with old versions.

So my questions:
Where can I find a obfsproxy bridge bundle for rpm-linux and for windows?
Is there any good explanation to why the traffic to my normal bridge and
my obfsproxy bridge got lower and lower after the release of tor 0.2.4
as stable?


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