Do clients request new consensus documents more often than we expect?
In our user count estimates, we used the reasoning that clients fetch a new consensus document every 2 to 4 hours, or on average 3 hours, so that represents 8 fetches per day on average.
But in reality, it seems that clients fetch consensus documents way more frequently than that: looking at just my local Tor client, I see
Jun 28 21:11:52.190 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 28 22:43:52.355 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 28 23:59:52.417 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 01:42:52.501 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 03:33:52.601 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 05:09:52.699 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 06:04:52.754 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 07:54:52.874 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 08:56:52.946 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 10:32:53.036 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 12:36:53.121 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 14:06:53.186 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 14:53:53.215 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 15:52:53.256 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 17:15:53.319 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
Jun 29 18:20:53.367 [info] update_consensus_networkstatus_downloads(): Launching microdesc standard networkstatus consensus download.
So first, this means maybe our user counting algorithms are off, since they involve heuristics like "divide by 10 where 10 is an estimate of the average daily consensus fetches from a client."
And second, does it mean that we are putting more load on the network than we expected, or need? How often do clients need a new consensus document really?