[tor-relays] Sudden bridge activity from Russia and Iran, strange?

[s7r]

nottryingtobelame at protonmail.com wrote:
> Hello, my new bridge sat for a few weeks with 0 clients. I understand it
> takes time to begin seeing clients, but all of a sudden within the span
> of one 6-hour heartbeat period, I picked up 346 clients. Since then, it
> has been 20-50 every 6 hours. But when I pull the bridge-stats file, it
> shows 104 from Iran, and 64 from Russia. These two are the overwhelming
> majority of my clients; all the other countries each have 8. Is this
> normal, or suspicious?

Nope. It is absolutely normal.
When you setup a new bridge it's quite possible to see 0 clients for
many weeks. It happened to all my new bridges as well.

After some time they get "distributed" to clients (clients learn about
them) and they start seeing client traffic. It's normal to see some
countries more than others which are known to censor Tor or otherwise
monitor its usage like the ones you mention.

It's all good and within normal parameters. Keep them running :) Thanks
for contributing!

-s7r

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