CN's nodes lookin' uncool, do they?

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 11:08:12PM +0200, BlueStar88 wrote:
> The chinese routers daily raise and fall and their massive proportion of
> exit nodes looks like sort of 'work-day-behavior-of-the-exit-spy':
> 
>         https://tor.xenobite.eu:82/mrtg-torstat/torstat-routers-cn-day.png
> 
> GMT+7

Here's an alternative to the conspiracy theory:

Notice that many of the China nodes have the nickname 'Unnamed'. This
is what you'll get if you don't set a Nickname -- for example, if you
click the "turn me into a server" button in Vidalia. Also, you use the
default exit policy when you click that button in Vidalia.

It's already been established informally through other measurements
that we have tens of thousands of Tor users in China. So the alternative
theory is that a slightly larger (but still quite small) percentage of
Chinese users have chosen to click the button in Vidalia.

> In opposite to the other major players:
> 
>         https://torstat.xenobite.eu/showstatistics.php
> 
> (down below that page)

Nice stats pages!

--Roger