Little traffic on the relay

Support Relay Operator
1

I’m looking at the stats and I don’t understand why so little traffic, is everything ok with the settings? Is no one using it?

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OR Addresses: IPv4,IPv6
Advertised Bandwidth: 20.57 KiB/s
Flags: Running Valid
Additional Flags: ReachableIPv6
Platform: Tor 0.4.8.12 on Linux
Transport protocols: webtunnel
Bridge distribution mechanism: Settings

The network speed on the server is much higher than Advertised Bandwidth indicates.

Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Fiberby ApS (Copenhagen) [521.36 km]: 8.22 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 883.83 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 237.04 Mbit/s

Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by TDC Group (Copenhagen) [521.36 km]: 7.643 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 465.02 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 897.84 Mbit/s

Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Stadtwerke Lübeck GmbH (Lübeck) [755.39 km]: 11.062 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 837.83 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 787.22 Mbit/s
1 Like
2

I see kind of the same thing except I operate a Snowflake proxy. A slight drop starting on 2025/06/04 then a bigger drop on 2025/06/06. The numbers on 2025/06/07 are 3-4% of the average traffic since 2024/11/23 when I started this project. The only metric I have is KiB reporting each hour like this:
2025/06/07 23:59:29 In the last 1h0m0s, there were 60 completed successful connections. Traffic Relayed ↓ 8848 KB (2.46 KB/s), ↑ 1700 KB (0.47 KB/s).

Other things I’ve noticed:
Most of the clients in this time period since 2025/06/04 are from IR and are 30 minutes or less in duration. During this period the completed successful connections in the message above are consistently around 40-60 whereas they are really lower (visually - have not analyzed properly- analysed 2025.06.09) than that before.

The Timed out waiting for client to open data channel numbers have really spiked. This tells me people are trying to connect but cannot and as above the ones who do connect are connected less than 30 minutes.

Most proxy operators would not have these stats. I compute them. I allow max 9 clients.

At first I thought there was a general slow down on the internet. Things seemed slow.

Maybe I’m reading too much into these numbers.

Maybe the states which censor do not anymore. :rofl:

2 Likes
3

please have a look at /var/lib/tor/stats/bridge-stats, if your bridge is used.

if not you may change your bridge distribution mechanism: doc/distributors.md · main · The Tor Project / Anti-censorship / rdsys · GitLab

please check https://bridges.torproject.org/status?id=YOURFINGERPRINT beforehand to make sure rdsys picked up your settings correctly

[info] BridgeDB to Rdsys / Onionoo.torproject.org vs. bridges.torproject.org

1 Like
4

Thank you. I’ve this statistic:

bridge-stats-end 2025-06-10 07:00:52 (86400 s)
bridge-ips ??=8
bridge-ip-versions v4=8,v6=0
bridge-ip-transports <OR>=8

So it’s fine, people are using it, and it makes sense to keep the relay?

5

Your bridge is not really used, but your OR port. Bridges should not expose their OR-port at all, because it makes the easy to spot…

What does https://bridges.torproject.org/status?id=YOURFINGERPRINT give back? Is it working at all?

1 Like
6

My Snowflake traffic seems normal today 2025/06/10

7

It shows:

Bridge 4XXXXXXXXXXX5 advertises:

* webtunnel: functional
  Last tested: 2025-06-10 11:36:20.182968 +0000 UTC (2h22m57.844219336s ago)
8

Summary from my point of view:

You have been running a webtunnel bridge since shortly after the call Tor in Russia: A call for more WebTunnel bridges

Your bridge is hardly used at all, which might be related to the fact

My suggestion is, first to close the ORPort and afterwards change the bridge distribution method

Simply add one of these lines to your torrc:

BridgeDistribution https

or
BridgeDistribution email

or
BridgeDistribution telegram

All imho, there will be other opinions, but I guess “settings” will be barely used right now: Request to build webtunnel bridge button directly into Tor Android browser

1 Like
9

How can I turn it off? If I remove ORPort from torrc, the relay does not start.

Jun 11 18:35:56 t tor[179529]: Jun 11 18:35:56.583 [warn] Failed to parse/validate config: BridgeRelay is 1, ORPort is not set. This is an invalid combination.
Jun 11 18:35:56 t tor[179529]: Jun 11 18:35:56.584 [err] Reading config failed--see warnings above.
Jun 11 18:35:56 t systemd[1]: tor@default.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jun 11 18:35:56 t systemd[1]: tor@default.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jun 11 18:35:56 t systemd[1]: Failed to start tor@default.service - Anonymizing overlay network for TCP.

And I’m using a firewall with 3 open ports: 22, 80, 443. The ORPort is unavailable.

I did according to this article: Tor Project | Compile and run WebTunnel from the source
I double-checked torrc now, it’s all correct.

1 Like
10

With closing I meant putting it on localhost, so it is not listening on a public interface:

ORPort 127.0.0.1:auto
1 Like