# Anyone experiencing problems with Snowflake proxy?

**URL:** https://forum.torproject.org/t/anyone-experiencing-problems-with-snowflake-proxy/6938
**Category:** Censorship Circumvention
**Tags:** snowflake
**Created:** [March 17, 2023, 2:25pm UTC](https://forum.torproject.org/t/anyone-experiencing-problems-with-snowflake-proxy/6938 "2023-03-17T14:25:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 11

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![dcf](https://forum.torproject.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@dcf](https://forum.torproject.org/u/dcf)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2023, 5:22am UTC](https://forum.torproject.org/t/anyone-experiencing-problems-with-snowflake-proxy/6938/11 "2023-03-18T05:22:33Z")

</div>

> [@Enkidu-6](#):
>
> Yes, thank you for the links. I’d read them. Just to clarify your conclusion, are you saying that in the past we were falsely reporting twice as many snowflake users because they would get disconnected and come back over and over again, and the current numbers are the accurate ones?

No, estimating the number of users doesn’t work by counting connections, it works by counting directory requests, which Tor clients do every few hours. The number of distinct connections does not affect how often a Tor client does a directory request, so the estimated number of users doesn’t change. See:

- [Sources – Tor Metrics](https://metrics.torproject.org/reproducible-metrics.html#users)
- [https://research.torproject.org/techreports/counting-daily-bridge-users-2012-10-24.pdf](https://research.torproject.org/techreports/counting-daily-bridge-users-2012-10-24.pdf)

In the [snowflake-01 relay search graphs](https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/5481936581E23D2D178105D44DB6915AB06BFB7F), you can see that the increase in bandwidth since 2023-03-13 has not been matched by an increase in users, at least not yet. It looks like the same number of users is getting better bandwidth.

> [@](#):
>
> Also, based on your conclusion, would I be correct to assume that the reason we have a spike in bandwidth usage is because in the past, people were getting cut off and couldn’t use snowflake as freely and now that they have a stable connection, they are using 5-6 times the bandwidth? In other words, this is not a bug, it’s a feature.

Yes, I think that’s right. I don’t know why it wasn’t detected as a larger problem before now. Because of the nature of the bug, it may be that it wasn’t a bigger problem when there were fewer overall users.

I don’t think it’s a 5–6× increase in bandwidth for all users or all proxies. More like 2× on average. Your proxies might be disproportionately affected if they have good connectivity.

> [@](#):
>
> Do we have any reports from users, indicating a huge performance spike when using snowflake?

I am not aware of any, but I can testify to it myself.

> [@](#):
>
> Currently I don’t have a bandwidth limitation as they are running on two bare metal servers, at two different providers. But if I did have a bandwidth limit, like majority of people, at this rate I’d have to shut down 20-25 of my proxies and only run 5-10 to use the same bandwidth as before. Not to mention the increase in RAM usage.
> 
> I personally don’t have a problem with that if this is indeed a feature and benefits the users, but are we sure?

That’s fine. Shut down however many proxies you need to stay within your resource limits. I have little doubt that the [snowflake#40262](https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40262) deployment is the cause of traffic changes you are seeing. I restarted the process myself and watched the bandwidth use immediately increase as a result.

Thanks for running Snowflake proxies.

---

_[View the full topic](https://forum.torproject.org/t/anyone-experiencing-problems-with-snowflake-proxy/6938)._