[tor-talk] Bridge users in September

[Curious Kid]

http://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=bridge-users&start=2011-06-14&end=2011-09-12&country=all&dpi=72#bridge-users

The spike this September dwarfs the early August spike at over 1 million bridge users. Maybe that means college is in session, but I've got a bad feeling it's something else. Maybe it's the natural escalation of the cat and mouse game by someone that really hates the idea of bridge nodes.


The CSV file works in MS Excel. There was no data from July 31 to August 4. The measurements taken on July 30 and August 5 were extremely low, so that leads me to think that data collection stopped early on July 30 and restarted late on August 5. The total number was also very low on August 6, so maybe data collection on that day was intermittent. It's strange that the first big spike began (or at least appeared to begin) on August 7, breaking 100,000 bridge users for the first time, and increasing to nearly half a million each of the following two days.


I noticed something else interesting. If you check the totals for July 29, the number of bridge users breaks 80,000 for the first time. I think if it weren't for the 7 to 8 day hole in the data, we would see a smoother spike instead of the sharp one.