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.

翻译：Tor网络多年来一直是互联网的重要组成部分。Tor最初起源于海军研究实验室，用于匿名网络浏览和基于互联网的通信。从最初用于匿名通信，现已扩展至其他各种用例，如规避审查、从事非法活动等。本文通过实证测量分析Tor网络多年来的趋势。我们通过自行开发的测量脚本、该领域的既有研究以及Tor指标目录提供的聚合数据收集测量数据，并利用这些数据剖析趋势，理解导致各数据参数趋势波动的具体事件。我们针对Tor用户、隐蔽服务、Tor中继及网桥等参数采集测量数据，同时研究审查相关事件，通过分析审查相关指标考察趋势。最后，我们探讨Tor网络的位置多样性，研究Tor中继在全球范围内的带宽分布如何影响Tor电路选择与构建过程。