[tor-relays] Is This Leap in Bridge Clients Normal

[teor]

Hi,

> On 11 Feb 2020, at 08:37, Eddie <stunnel at attglobal.net> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> For about 6 weeks now, I've been running a couple of obfs4 bridges, one on port 80, the other port 443.  Up to yesterday, the port 80 one had seen zero traffic, when this started to be reported:
> 
> Feb 09 13:46:19.000 [notice] Heartbeat: In the last 6 hours, I have seen 0 unique clients.
> Feb 09 19:46:19.000 [notice] Heartbeat: In the last 6 hours, I have seen 533 unique clients.
> Feb 10 01:46:19.000 [notice] Heartbeat: In the last 6 hours, I have seen 63 unique clients.
> Feb 10 07:46:19.000 [notice] Heartbeat: In the last 6 hours, I have seen 212 unique clients.
> Feb 10 13:46:19.000 [notice] Heartbeat: In the last 6 hours, I have seen 93 unique clients.
> Feb 10 19:46:19.000 [notice] Heartbeat: In the last 6 hours, I have seen 61 unique clients.
> 
> Is this kind of sudden usage normal.

Yes, we've seen it before.

Either someone is changing IP address quite frequently, or an app is picking bridges,
and sending them out to its users.

> For the port 443 bridge, I have seen very little traffic at all, which surprises me as I thought that obfs4 bridges on port 443 were highly sought after.

Each bridge is allocated to a separate distribution method. Some
distribution methods are less popular than others.

There is also a "reserve" distribution method. If someone harvests
and blocks all the bridges using a distribution method, we can fix
the issue, and then replace them with the "reserve" bridges.

If you're not seeing the traffic you expect, you could run a few more
bridges, on another IP or port?

> A relay search for "OhNoAnother" will pull up the details.

Thanks for running bridges!

T

--
teor
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