Analyzing Trends in Tor

TL;DR

This paper conducts empirical analysis of the Tor network over the years, examining user trends, relay data, censorship impacts, and geographic diversity to understand its evolving usage and structure.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive empirical measurement-based analysis of Tor's usage, relay, and censorship trends, highlighting how these factors influence the network's evolution.

Findings

Tor user base has fluctuated over the years.

Censorship events significantly impact Tor usage patterns.

Geographic distribution affects circuit construction and bandwidth allocation.

Abstract

The Tor Network has been a significant part of the Internet for years. Tor was originally started in the Naval Research Laboratory for anonymous Internet browsing and Internet-based communication. From being used for anonymous communications, it has now segmented into various other use-cases like censorship circumvention, performing illegal activities, etc. In this paper, we perform empirical measurements on the Tor network to analyze the trends in Tor over the years. We gather our measurements data through our measurement scripts, past research in this domain, and aggregated data provided by the Tor metrics directory. We use this data to analyze trends and understand the incidents that caused fluctuations in the trends of different data parameters. We collect measurements data for Tor parameters like Tor users, onion services, Tor relays, and bridges, etc. We also study censorshiprelated events and study trends by analyzing censorship-related metrics. Finally, we touch upon the location diversity in Tor and study how the Tor circuit selection and construction are impacted by the bandwidth distribution of Tor relays across geographies.