Network Changes

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It is not to easy to spot days that have an unusually high rate of newly added relays by looking at network size. What about a new graph that shows only the number of new unique relay fingerprints first seen on a given day? [1]

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Using package dependency management

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Libraries

library(readr)
library(dplyr)
library(ggplot2)
library(tidyr)
library(scales)

Data Preparation

Assume bridges & relays variables have unique fingerprints

servers <- read_csv("https://metrics.torproject.org/stats/servers.csv") %>% 
  filter(is.na(flag) & is.na(country) & is.na(version) & is.na(platform) & is.na(ec2bridge)) %>%
  select(date, bridges, relays) %>% 
  mutate(bridges = as.integer(bridges)) %>% 
  mutate(date = as.Date(date)) %>% 
  mutate(new_relays =  relays - lag(relays)) %>% 
  mutate(new_bridges =  bridges - lag(bridges)) %>% 
  select(date, new_bridges, new_relays) %>% 
  gather(device, count, -date) %>% 
  arrange(date)

Plot Network Changes

network_changes() - function to plot network changes

network_changes <- function(start, end, path) {
  end <- min(end, as.character(Sys.Date() - 2))
  servers %>% 
    filter(date >= as.Date(start) & date <= as.Date(end)) %>% 
    ggplot(aes(date, count, color = device)) +
      geom_line(size = 0.8) +
      scale_x_date(labels = date_format("%b-%Y")) +
      scale_colour_hue("", breaks = c("new_relays", "new_bridges")) +
      ggtitle("Change in Daily Number of Relays\n") +
      theme(plot.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5)) + 
      labs(y = "", x = "\nThe Tor Project - https://metrics.torproject.org")    
  ggsave(path, device = "png", width = 8, height = 5, dpi = 72) 
}

Unit Tests

2007-10-27 to 2017-5-25

network_changes("2007-10-27", "2017-5-25", "./images/newrelays1.png")

2016-6-1 to 2017-5-25

network_changes("2016-6-1", "2017-5-25", "./images/newrelays2.png")

2015-1-1 to 2015-5-25

network_changes("2015-1-1", "2015-5-25", "./images/newrelays3.png")

2013-1-1 to 2016-12-31

network_changes("2013-1-1", "2016-12-31", "./images/newrelays4.png")

2012-5-1 to 2014-6-30

network_changes("2012-5-1", "2014-6-30", "./images/newrelays5.png")