[tor-dev] Hidden Service statistics coming soon!

[George Kadianakis]

George Kadianakis <desnacked at riseup.net> writes:

> Hello people,
>
> for the past few months we've been working on getting better
> statistics for hidden services [0].
>
> The questions we are trying to answer are "Approximately how many
> hidden services are there?" and "Approximately how much traffic of the
> Tor network is going to hidden services?".
>
> We can answer these questions by collecting statistics from Tor
> relays: specifically, from hidden service directories (HSDirs) and
> rendezvous points. In our design, these relays first obfuscate the
> statistics before publishing them, so that the numbers themselves are
> not entirely precise [1]. We specify how exactly these statistics are
> collected in proposal 238-hs-relay-stats.txt [2].
>
> We have also developed a Tor branch [3] implementing that proposal
> that people can run on their relays to start collecting hidden service
> statistics. The corresponding trac ticket is #13192 if you want to
> follow the developer discussion [4].
>
> Our plan is that in approximately a week we will ask volunteers to run
> the branch. Then in a month from now we will use those stats to write
> a blog post about the approximate size of Tor hidden services network
> and the approximate traffic it's pushing.
>

Hello,

we have now finished writing a tech report with the results of these
statistics. You can find it in PDF form here:
https://research.torproject.org/techreports/extrapolating-hidserv-stats-2015-01-31.pdf

We are currently working on a more casual-reader-friendly blog post,
which will contain additional information that the Tor community might
be interested in. You will find it in blog.torproject.org in two weeks
from now or so.