[tor-project] BWAuth Relay Count Declining

[starlight.2016q1 at binnacle.cx]

At 16:58 3/27/2016 +0000, nusenu wrote:
>Hi,
>
>> For the past several days the number of relays
>> measured by my bwuath (whose data is given my
>> maatuska) have been slowly declining.  Originally
>> I had an alert when it was below 8800, a few days
>> I noticed it going below that. By today it's
>> decreased to below 8700 to 8664.
>> 
>> It's not the lowest bwauth measuring, but I don't
>> see anything obviously wrong with my bwauth to
>> indicate the decline. (The number I mentioned is
>> number of lines in the bwscan.V3BandwidthsFile
>> file, not the measured relays that make it into
>> the consensus - but the comparison I just made did
>> use the consensus count.)
>
>
>If "past several days" matches with "since
>2016-03-24", then I would not be surprised if the
>Global Frag Networks group [1] caused this - at
>least partially.
>
>Many of the unmeasured relays are from the global
>frag group (since they just joined the network)
>
>https://github.com/ornetstats/stats#stats-on-measured-and-recommended-flag
>
>Many new relays means a rise in unmeasured relays
>and if at the same time a few relays leave then
>that would explain the decline even for absolute
>values.
>
>
>[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.network.onion-routing.ornetradar/1135
>    http://article.gmane.org/gmane.network.onion-routing.ornetradar/1132


Interesting.  Perhaps the arrival of bunches of
new relays is a trigger for or exacerbates the bug
where BWauths skip measurements, scanner/band #1 esp.